Detection of high energy showers by the Astroneu extensive air shower array

Abstract

The Astroneu Extensive Air Shower (EAS) array comprises autonomous detection stations; each station consisting of 3 large scintillator detectors and one or more Radio Frequency (RF) antennas. The scintillator detectors of a station are able to detect showers with a low energy threshold of 20−30 TeV, at a rate of 10−20 showers per hour depending on the station geometrical layout. The RF antennas are used to detect very high energy EAS (E > 1017eV) through their radio wave emission. This work focuses in reconstructing and studying showers that have been detected synchronously by the scintillator detectors of two distant Astroneu stations. The performance of the array to detect and reconstruct the direction of such high energy (E > 5 · 1015eV) showers is evaluated by comparing the experimental measurements to the predictions of a detail Monte Carlo (MC) simulation.