Demonstrating Agreement between Radio and Fluorescence Measurements of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

We show, for the first time, radio measurements of the depth of shower maximum ($X_{\text{max}}$) of air showers induced by cosmic rays that are compared to measurements of the established fluorescence method at the same location. Using measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory we show full compatibility between our radio and the previously published fluorescence data set, and between a subset of air showers observed simultaneously with both radio and fluorescence techniques, a measurement setup unique to the Pierre Auger Observatory. Furthermore, we show radio $X_{\text{max}}$ resolution as a function of energy and demonstrate the ability to make competitive high-resolution $X_{\text{max}}$ measurements with even a sparse radio array. With this, we show that the radio technique is capable of cosmic-ray mass composition studies, both at Auger and at other experiments.

Published version

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• A LOFAR-style reconstruction of cosmic-ray air showers with SKA-Low
• Radio Detection of ultra-high-energy Cosmic-Ray Air Showers
• Aperture correction for Beamforming in radiometric detection of ultra-high energy cosmic rays
• A Bayesian Method for Air-Shower Reconstruction using Information Field Theory
• Uncertainties in the Estimation of Air Shower Observables from Monte Carlo Simulation of Radio Emission