Speaker
Dr
Charles Timmermans
(Nikhef/Radboud University Nijmegen)
Description
Detection of ultra high energy cosmic rays, generating an air shower in the atmosphere of the Earth, is usually performed through the detection of secondary particles at the surface or through the detection of the fluorescence light generated in the sky. The latter has the advantage of providing a longitudinal profile of the shower development, and the disadvantage of a limited uptime of only about 10%.
It is possible to detect the electromagnetic signals of air showers in the MHz regime using relatively cheap detectors. In principle, also this technique provides information on the shower
development through the measured frequency dependence of the signal, and therefore this technique holds the potential to provide high-precision data required to determine airshower parameters. In order to fully utilize this technique technical steps need to be
made: e.g., the discrimination against man-made or atmospheric transient noise. In the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) we perform the R&D for radio detection taking advantage of the other enhancements of the Pierre Auger Observatory AMIGA and HEAT. We focus on the development of low-noise, low-power digitizers with selftriggering capabilities while a higher level trigger is based on the arrival times of the radio signals at each detector station. The current status and future development of AERA will be described.
Author
Dr
Charles Timmermans
(Nikhef/Radboud University Nijmegen)
Co-author
Pierre Auger Collaboration
(Observatorio Pierre Auger)
