Radio detection of air showers with the Auger Engineering Radio Array

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION (AUTOR 434 DE 474); M. TUEROS

Rio de Janeiro

Conferencia; 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2013); 2013

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP)

Abstract: The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is one of the low-energy extensions of the detector systems of the Pierre Auger Observatory. AERA is being used to study the emission of radio waves from extensive air showers. It operates in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Recently, AERA has been expanded to 124 radio stations over an area of approximately 6 km2 . In 2014 we will deploy 36 additional stations, and by this extend the area to at least 10 km2 . With this AERA160 setup we will be able to determine the measurement resolution for the arrival direction, the energy, and the mass-composition of primary cosmic rays with energies larger than 1E17.5 eV. In this paper, we describe the setup of AERA. We also present and discuss the first physics results and techniques that have been developed for AERA24, the first phase of AERA consisting of 24 stations distributed over an area of 0.5 km2 . In particular, we show a comparison of a measured event with simulations.