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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 103: Kosmische Strahlung 4

T 103.5: Talk

Thursday, March 27, 2014, 17:45–18:00, P5

Interferometry with AERA — •Dmytro Rogozin for the Pierre Auger collaboration — Institut für Experimentelle Kernphysik, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is an array of 124 radio-antenna stations in Argentina at the Pierre Auger Observatory. They operate in the frequency range of 30 to 80 MHz and detect broad band radio signals from air showers which are initiated by cosmic ray particles.

In this talk we present an interferometric technique for the reconstruction of air-shower parameters such as the arrival direction, the energy and distance to the shower maximum. Three types of so-called beams are discussed: the power beam, the cross-correlation beam and the excess beam. Using these interferometric quantities, the reconstruction can be improved by suppressing incoherent noise and, thus, increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. As a result, the sky can be scanned and cross-correlation and power beam maps can be produced. This way, the air-shower can be identified and distinguished from background. Such kind of interferometric techniques were already applied for LOPES. So far, several simplifications have been made, e.g., ignoring near-field effects and assuming that the radio pulse has the same shape in all antennas. These issues become more important when going to larger scales as for AERA. We discuss these problems and possible solutions.