Ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic neutrinos interacting with the Moon’s regolith generate particle showers that emit Askaryan radiation. This radiation can be observed from the Earth using ground-based ...radio telescopes like LOFAR. We simulate the effective detection aperture for UHE neutrinos hitting the Moon. Under the same assumptions, results from this work are in good agreement with previous analytic parameterizations and Monte Carlo codes. The dependence of the effective detection aperture on the observing parameters, such as observing frequency and minimum detection threshold, and lunar characteristics like surface topography have been studied. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we find that the detectable neutrino energy threshold is lowered when we include a realistic treatment of the inelasticity, transmission coefficient, and surface roughness. Lunar surface roughness at large scales enhances the total aperture for higher observation frequencies (
ν
≥
1
GHz
) but has no significant effect on the LOFAR aperture. However, roughness at scales small compared to the wavelength reduces the aperture at all frequencies.
Abstract
The common phenomenon of lightning still harbors many secrets such as what are the conditions for lightning initiation and what is driving the discharge to propagate over several tens of ...kilometers through the atmosphere forming conducting ionized channels called leaders. Since lightning is an electric discharge phenomenon, there are positively and negatively charged leaders. In this work we report on measurements made with the LOFAR radio telescope, an instrument primarily build for radio-astronomy observations. It is observed that a negative leader rather suddenly changes, for a few milliseconds, into a mode where it radiates 100 times more VHF power than typical negative leaders after which it spawns a large number of more typical negative leaders. This mode occurs during the initial stage, soon after initiation, of all lightning flashes we have mapped (about 25). For some flashes this mode occurs also well after initiation and we show one case where it is triggered twice, some 100 ms apart. We postulate that this is indicative of a small (order of 5 km
$$^2$$
2
) high charge pocket. Lightning thus appears to be initiated exclusively in the vicinity of such a small but dense charge pocket.
LORA: A scintillator array for LOFAR to measure extensive air showers Thoudam, S.; Buitink, S.; Corstanje, A. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2014, Letnik:
767
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The measurement of the radio emission from extensive air showers, induced by high-energy cosmic rays, is one of the key science projects of the LOFAR radio telescope. The LOfar Radboud air shower ...Array (LORA) has been installed in the core of LOFAR in the Netherlands. The main purpose of LORA is to measure the properties of air showers and to trigger the read-out of the LOFAR radio antennas to register extensive air showers. The experimental set-up of the array of scintillation detectors and its performance are described.
The LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is used to make precise measurements of radio emission from extensive air showers, yielding information about the primary cosmic ray. Interpreting the measured data ...requires an absolute and frequency-dependent calibration of the LOFAR system response. This is particularly important for spectral analyses, because the shape of the detected signal holds information about the shower development. We revisit the calibration of the LOFAR antennas in the range of 30–80 MHz. Using the Galactic emission and a detailed model of the LOFAR signal chain, we find an improved calibration that provides an absolute energy scale and allows for the study of frequency dependent features in measured signals. With the new calibration, systematic uncertainties of 13% are reached, and comparisons of the spectral shape of calibrated data with simulations show promising agreement.
Context. In the previous decade, two new classes of fast radio transients were detected: the Galactic, rotating radio transients (RRATs) and the extragalactic fast radio bursts (FRBs). If the ...detectable emission of these objects extends to lower radio frequencies, the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is ideally suited to seek and localize these transients at frequencies of 10–250 MHz. This is due to LOFAR’s sensitivity, diverse beamform capabilities, and transient buffers for the individual elements that allow post-event imaging of events, potentially at arcsecond resolution. Aims. Our aim is to identify and localize pulses at frequencies below 250 MHz and, in the case of nondetections, derive upper limits on the sky and volume rates of FRBs. Methods. A real-time search program for fast radio transients is installed on the LOFAR systems which runs commensally with other observations, and uses the wide incoherent LOFAR beam (11.25 deg2 at 150 MHz). Buffered data from hundreds of dipoles are used to reconstruct the direction and polarization information of the event, and to distinguish between celestial, terrestrial, and instrumental origins. Results. Observations were taken covering either the frequency range 119–151 MHz or in four frequency bands, each of 2 MHz in width, centered at 124, 149, 156, and 185 MHz. A first pilot survey covered a range of dispersion measures (DM) below 120 pc cm−3, focusing on Galactic sources, and resulted in an upper limit on the transient rate at LOFAR frequencies of less than 1500 events per sky per day above a fluency of 1.6 kJy ms for an 8-ms pulse. A second pilot survey covered a range of DMs below 500 pc cm−3, focusing on extragalactic sources to about 1 Gpc, and resulted in an upper limit of 1400 events per sky per day above a fluency of 6.0 kJy ms for an 8-ms pulse. Using a model for the distance-DM relationship, this equates to an upper limit of 134 events per Gpc3 per day.
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