Detection of cosmic rays with the IAR radiotelescope

M. BORGHI; M. TUEROS

La Plata

Encuentro; 58a reunión de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2015

Asociación Argentina de Astronomía

Recently, radio detection has been proposed as one of the most promising techniques to instrument the next generation of UHECR observatories. This technique would exploit the GHz radio emission of the air ionized by the passage of the UHECR cascade to track the longitudinal development of the cascade in the atmosphere. A successful implementation of this technique would allow the estimation of the UHECR energy and incoming direction as it is currently done with the UV fluorescence technique used in the Pierre Auger Observatory but with the advantage of having nearly a 100 % duty cycle and little dependence on atmospheric condition. Laboratory measurements of the radio emission originating from an ion-ized air plasma left by the passage of a high energy electron beam, indicated that a UHECR cascade would emit enough radiation in the GHz frequency range to be detectable by a system with a small (2?5 m) dish antenna and commercial ?off the shelf? electronics. Unfortunately, none of the experimental efforts conducted for its detection on the field has been successful, rising doubts on either the interpretation of the accelerator measurements or on the scaling employed to go from laboratory conditions to a real UHECR cascade. We propose to use the IAR 30 m radiotelescope to search for signals compatible with UHECR cascades with unprecedented sensitivity, in order to determine the intensity of the radio emission from particle cascades or at least set an upper limit. In this article we show the sensitivity to UHECR cascades and the event rate that a 4 pixel detector mounted in the antenna focus would have.