Speaker
Description
Experiments for radio detection of UHE particles such as e.g. ARA/ARIANNA or
NuMoon require detailed understanding of the propagation of radio waves in the
surrounding matter. The index of refraction in e.g. polar ice or lunar rock may
have a complex spatial structure that makes detailed simulations of the radio
propagation necessary to design the respective experiments and analyse their
data. Here, we present RadioPropa as a new modular ray tracing code that
solves the eikonal equation with a Runge-Kutta method in arbitrary refractivity
fields. RadioPropa is based on the cosmic ray
propagation code CRPropa, which has been forked to allow efficient
incorporation of the required data structures for ray tracing while retaining
its modular design. This allows for the setup of versatile simulation geometries as
well as the easy inclusion of additional physical effects such as e.g. partial
reflection on boundary layers in the simulations. We discuss the principal
design of the code as well as its performance in example applications.
