In the last few years, radio detection of cosmic ray air showers has experienced a true renaissance. In particular, the LOPES project has successfully implemented modern interferometric methods to ...measure radio emission from air showers. LOPES has confirmed that the emission is coherent and of geomagnetic origin, as expected by the geosynchrotron mechanism, and has demonstrated that a large scale application of the radio technique has great potential to complement current measurements of ultra-high energy cosmic rays.
Air shower radio detection with LOPES Blümer, J; Apel, W D; Arteaga, J C ...
Journal of physics. Conference series,
07/2008, Letnik:
120, Številka:
6
Journal Article
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LOPES is an array of 30 radio antenna co-located with the KASCADE-Grande extensive air shower detector in Karlsruhe, Germany. It is designed as a digital radio interferometer for the detection of ...radio emission from extensive air showers. LOPES features high bandwidth and fast data processing. A unique asset is the concurrent operation with KASCADE-Grande. We report about the progress in understanding the radio signals measured by LOPES. In addition, the status and further perspectives of LOPES and the large scale application of this novel detection technique are sketched.
The energy spectrum of cosmic rays between 10**16 eV and 10**18 eV, derived from measurements of the shower size (total number of charged particles) and the total muon number of extensive air showers ...by the KASCADE-Grande experiment, is described. The resulting all-particle energy spectrum exhibits strong hints for a hardening of the spectrum at approximately 2x10**16 eV and a significant steepening at c. 8x10**16 eV. These observations challenge the view that the spectrum is a single power law between knee and ankle. Possible scenarios generating such features are discussed in terms of astrophysical processes that may explain the transition region from galactic to extragalactic origin of cosmic rays.
The constant intensity cut method is a very useful tool to reconstruct the cosmic ray energy spectrum in order to combine or compare extensive air shower data measured for different attenuation ...depths independently of the MC model. In this contribution the method is used to explore the muon data of the KASCADE-Grande experiment. In particular, with this technique, the measured muon number spectra for different zenith angle ranges are compared and summed up to obtain a single muon spectrum for the measured showers. Preliminary results are presented, along with estimations of the systematic uncertainties associated with the analysis technique.
The KASCADE-Grande experiment operates at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Itʼs aim is the study of the primary cosmic radiation, through Extensive Air Shower detection, in the ...range 10
16–10
18 eV. Here, measurements are of main interest to understand the high energy evolution of cosmic radiation: a change in the slope of the heavy primary spectrum is expected (as measured at lower energies for lighter primaries) as a possible confirmation of the predicted astrophysical mechanisms; moreover, in this range the transition from galactic to extragalactic radiation is supposed to take place and the observations could clarify the features of this transition, putting the basis for the interpretation of the data at the highest energies. For these tasks KASCADE-Grande fulfills very well the requirements, both concerning the acceptance and the experimental performances. The experiment is constituted by two co-operating arrays of detectors: the KASCADE array, with its 252 detectors in a dense grid of 200×200 m
2 and the Grande array, made of 37 detectors arranged on a wider area of 700×700 m
2. The Grande array samples the total charged particles size of the air shower, while the KASCADE array provides the muon size In this contribution, KASCADE-Grande measurement of the cosmic ray primary energy spectrum is presented. The exploited technique, calibrated with simulations, combines the charged particles component and muon component on a shower by shower basis, performing the energy estimation of each primary event. Other techniques are also performed, for a better evaluation of systematics and a check of consistency of the hadronic interaction model used in simulations.
A large area (128 m^2) Muon Tracking Detector (MTD), located within the KASCADE experiment, has been built with the aim to identify muons (E_mu > 0.8 GeV) and their directions in extensive air ...showers by track measurements under more than 18 r.l. shielding. The orientation of the muon track with respect to the shower axis is expressed in terms of the radial- and tangential angles. By means of triangulation the muon production height H_mu is determined. By means of H_mu, a transition from light to heavy cosmic ray primary particle with increasing shower energy Eo from 1-10 PeV is observed. Muon pseudorapidity distributions for the first interactions above 15 km are studied and compared to Monte Carlo simulations.
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