Interferometric Analysis of Air-shower Radio Emission in the Near Field with an Information Field Theory Approach

Abstract

Current reconstruction techniques for air-shower radio emission generated by cosmic rays have shown great success, having been applied to several radio detectors over the last decade. Nevertheless, they are limited by their high computational cost, simplified approximations, and signal information used for reconstruction. As such, advanced analyses are required to not only be able to perform a holistic reconstruction of all parameters, but also to conduct near-field interferometry of the air shower. This can be achieved through Information Field Theory (IFT), an imaging reconstruction framework based on Bayesian inference that can extract all available information within the signal to infer distributions of field-like quantities. In this chapter, we highlight current novel approaches that use IFT for air shower reconstruction, and the potential of their applicability towards SKA-Low.

Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II (AASKAII), 2026 (arXiv:2606.20366). Report-no:AASKAII/Watanabe01