Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION (471 AUTHORS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER); GARCIA, B

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2016 vol. 116 p. 1 - 9

0031-9007

P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }Wemeasure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form ofradio emission in the frequencyrange from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of thePierre Auger Observatory, weobtain a radiationenergy of15.8+/-0.7(stat)+/- 6.7(syst)MeVfor cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arrivingperpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scalingquadratically with the cosmic-ray energy.Acomparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principlescalculations shows agreement withour measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to thecalorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive airshowers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibrationof any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energyscale of the Pierre Auger Observator.