Abstract
We developed a radio interferometric technique for the observation of extensive air showers initiated by cosmic particles. In this proof-of-principle study we show that properties of extensive air showers can be derived with high accuracy in a straightforward manner. When time synchronisation below sim 1 ns between different receivers can be achieved, direction reconstruction resolution of < 0.2^circ and resolution on the depth of shower maximum of <10 g/cm^2 are obtained over the full parameter range studied, with even higher accuracy for inclined incoming directions. In addition, by applying the developed method to dense arrays of radio antennas, the energy threshold for the radio detection of extensive air showers can be significantly lowered. The proposed method can be incorporated in operational and future cosmic particle observatories and with its high accuracy it has the potential to play a crucial role in unravelling the composition of the ultra-high-energy cosmic-particle flux.
Highlights
Interferometry is a method to expose coherence properties in wave phenomena and is applied in many branches of physics
We developed a radio interferometric technique for the observation of extensive air showers initiated by cosmic particles
In this proof-of-principle study we show that properties of extensive air showers can be derived with high accuracy in a straightforward manner
Summary
Interferometry is a method to expose coherence properties in wave phenomena and is applied in many branches of physics. In this study we show how interferometry can be used to derive properties of a relativistic cascade of particles initiated by an (ultra-) high-energy cosmic particle in the atmosphere, a so-called extensive air shower (EAS). Radio interferometry is widely used in radio astronomy, the properties of signals from radio emission from EAS mandate a different approach. This difference will enable three dimensional reconstruction of the EAS properties. Another difference is that the signal is impulsive (with a typical duration in the order of nano-seconds), which has the benefit that aliasing features occurring at time differences that are multiples of the wavelength are suppressed in comparison to continuous emitting sources. 1120 Page 2 of 8 be implemented as an improvement to the proof-of-principle (a) study presented here
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