Complex analysis of Askaryan radiation: A fully analytic treatment including the LPM effect and Cascade Form Factor

Abstract

The Askaryan effect describes coherent electromagnetic radiation from high-energy cascades in dense media with a collective charge. We present an analytic model of Askaryan radiation that accounts simultaneously for the three-dimensional form factor of the cascade, and quantum mechanical cascade elongation via the Landau–Pomeranchuk–Migdal effect. These calculations, and the associated open-source code, allow the user to avoid computationally intensive Monte Carlo cascade simulations. Searches for cosmogenic neutrinos in Askaryan-based detectors benefit from computational speed, because scans of Askaryan parameter-space are required to match neutrino signals. The Askaryan field is derived from cascade equations verified with Geant4 simulations, and compared with prior numerical and semi-analytic calculations. Finally, instructive cases of the model are transformed from the Fourier domain to the time-domain. Next-generation in situ detectors like ARA and ARIANNA can use analytic time-domain signal models to search for correlations with event candidates.