Framework and Tools for the Simulation and Analysis of the Radio Emission from Air Showers at IceCube

Abstract

The Surface Enhancement of the IceTop air-shower array will include the addition of radio antennas and scintillator panels, co-located with the existing ice-Cherenkov tanks and covering an area of about 1 km${}^2$. Together, these will increase the sensitivity of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to the electromagnetic and muonic components of cosmic-ray-induced air showers at the South Pole. The inclusion of the radio technique necessitates an expanded set of simulation and analysis tools to explore the radio-frequency emission from air showers in the 70 MHz to 350 MHz band. In this paper we describe the software modules that have been developed to work with time- and frequency-domain information within IceCube's existing software framework, IceTray, which is used by the entire IceCube collaboration. The software includes a method by which air-shower simulation, generated using CoREAS, can be reused via waveform interpolation, thus overcoming a significant computational hurdle in the field.