Abstract
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is an extension of the Pierre Auger Cosmic-Ray Observatory. It is used to detect radio emission from extensive air showers with energies beyond $10^{17}~$eV in the $30 - 80~$MHz frequency band. After three phases of deployment, AERA now consists of more than 150 autonomous radio stations with different spacings, covering an area of about $17~$km$^2$. It is located at the same site as other Auger low-energy detector extensions enabling combinations with various other measurement techniques. The radio array allows different technical schemes to be explored as well as cross-calibration of our measurements with the established baseline detectors of the Auger Observatory. We report on the most recent technological developments and give an overview of the experimental results obtained with AERA. In particular, we will present the measurement of the radiation energy, i.e., the amount of energy that is emitted by the air shower in the form of radio emission, and its dependence on the cosmic-ray energy by comparing with the measurement of the the well-calibrated Auger surface detector. Furthermore, we outline the relevance of this result for the absolute calibration of the energy scale of cosmic-ray observatories.
Highlights
The Auger Engineering Radio ArrayThe Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory [1] and measures extensive air showers with energies above 1017 eV
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is an extension of the Pierre Auger Cosmic-Ray Observatory
To measure the radiation energy, i.e., the amount of energy that is transferred from the cosmic ray during the air shower development into radio emission in the frequency band of AERA (30 - 80 MHz), we first unfold the detector response from the measured voltage traces
Summary
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory [1] and measures extensive air showers with energies above 1017 eV. The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world’s largest detector for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. It is located in western Argentina and covers an area of 3000 km. In its current stage of expansion, AERA consists of 153 autonomously operating radio detector stations covering an area of 17 km. Most of the stations (filled triangles) are equipped with a ring buffer large enough to store the measured radio signals for 7 s to be able to receive an external trigger from the SD and FD. The rest of the stations which are equipped with a Butterfly antenna contain small scintillators for trigger purposes
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