arXiv subjects

L. Bähren

Publications and source records attributed to L. Bähren.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

LOPES 3D - vectorial measurements of radio emission from cosmic ray induced air showers

LOPES 3D is able to measure all three components of the electric field vector of the radio emission from air showers. This allows a better comparison with emission models. The measurement of the vertical component increases the sensitivity to inclined showers. By measuring all three components of the electric field vector LOPES 3D demonstrates by how much the reconstruction accuracy of primary cosmic ray parameters increases. Thus LOPES 3D evaluates the usefulness of vectorial measurements for large scale applications.

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arXiv2013

Thunderstorm Observations by Air-Shower Radio Antenna Arrays

Relativistic, charged particles present in extensive air showers lead to a coherent emission of radio pulses which are measured to identify the shower initiating high-energy cosmic rays. Especially during thunderstorms, there are additional strong electric fields in the atmosphere, which can lead to further multiplication and acceleration of the charged particles and thus have influence on the form and strength of the radio emission. For a reliable energy reconstruction of the primary cosmic ray by means of the measured radio signal it is very important to understand how electric fields affect the radio emission. In addition, lightning strikes are a prominent source of broadband radio emissions that are visible over very long distances. This, on the one hand, causes difficulties in the detection of the much lower signal of the air shower. On the other hand the recorded signals can be used to study features of the lightning development. The detection of cosmic rays via the radio emission and the influence of strong electric fields on this detection technique is investigated with the LOPES experiment in Karlsruhe, Germany. The important question if a lightning is initiated by the high electron density given at the maximum of a high-energy cosmic-ray air shower is also investigated, but could not be answered by LOPES. But, these investigations exhibit the capabilities of EAS radio antenna arrays for lightning studies. We report about the studies of LOPES measured radio signals of air showers taken during thunderstorms and give a short outlook to new measurements dedicated to search for correlations of lightning and cosmic rays.

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arXiv2013

LOPES-3D, an antenna array for full signal detection of air-shower radio emission

To better understand the radio signal emitted by extensive air-showers and to further develop the radio detection technique of high-energy cosmic rays, the LOPES experiment was reconfigured to LOPES-3D. LOPES-3D is able to measure all three vectorial components of the electric field of radio emission from cosmic ray air showers. The additional measurement of the vertical component ought to increase the reconstruction accuracy of primary cosmic ray parameters like direction and energy, provides an improved sensitivity to inclined showers, and will help to validate simulation of the emission mechanisms in the atmosphere. LOPES-3D will evaluate the feasibility of vectorial measurements for large scale applications. In order to measure all three electric field components directly, a tailor-made antenna type (tripoles) was deployed. The change of the antenna type necessitated new pre-amplifiers and an overall recalibration. The reconfiguration and the recalibration procedure are presented and the operationality of LOPES-3D is demonstrated.

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arXiv2013

Cosmic Ray Measurements with LOPES: Status and Recent Results (ARENA 2012)

LOPES is a digital antenna array at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, for cosmic-ray air-shower measurements. Triggered by the co-located KASCADE-Grande air-shower array, LOPES detects the radio emission of air showers via digital radio interferometry. We summarize the status of LOPES and recent results. In particular, we present an update on the reconstruction of the primary-particle properties based on almost 500 events above 100 PeV. With LOPES, the arrival direction can be reconstructed with a precision of at least 0.65°, and the energy with a precision of at least 20 %, which, however, does not include systematic uncertainties on the absolute energy scale. For many particle and astrophysics questions the reconstruction of the atmospheric depth of the shower maximum, Xmax, is important, since it yields information on the type of the primary particle and its interaction with the atmosphere. Recently, we found experimental evidence that the slope of the radio lateral distribution is indeed sensitive to the longitudinal development of the air shower, but unfortunately, the Xmax precision at LOPES is limited by the high level of anthropogenic radio background. Nevertheless, the developed methods can be transferred to next generation experiments with lower background, which should provide an Xmax precision competitive to other detection technologies.

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arXiv2012

Experimental evidence for the sensitivity of the air-shower radio signal to the longitudinal shower development

We observe a correlation between the slope of radio lateral distributions, and the mean muon pseudorapidity of 59 individual cosmic-ray-air-shower events. The radio lateral distributions are measured with LOPES, a digital radio interferometer co-located with the multi-detector-air-shower array KASCADE-Grande, which includes a muon-tracking detector. The result proves experimentally that radio measurements are sensitive to the longitudinal development of cosmic-ray air-showers. This is one of the main prerequisites for using radio arrays for ultra-high-energy particle physics and astrophysics.

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arXiv2011

LOFAR: Detecting Cosmic Rays with a Radio Telescope

LOFAR (the Low Frequency Array), a distributed digital radio telescope with stations in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, is designed to enable full-sky monitoring of transient radio sources. These capabilities are ideal for the detection of broadband radio pulses generated in cosmic ray air showers. The core of LOFAR consists of 24 stations within 4 square kilometers, and each station contains 96 low-band antennas and 48 high-band antennas. This dense instrumentation will allow detailed studies of the lateral distribution of the radio signal in a frequency range of 10-250 MHz. Such studies are key to understanding the various radio emission mechanisms within the air shower, as well as for determining the potential of the radio technique for primary particle identification. We present the status of the LOFAR cosmic ray program, including the station design and hardware, the triggering and filtering schemes, and our initial observations of cosmic-ray-induced radio pulses.

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arXiv2011

Observing pulsars and fast transients with LOFAR

Low frequency radio waves, while challenging to observe, are a rich source of information about pulsars. The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is a new radio interferometer operating in the lowest 4 octaves of the ionospheric "radio window": 10-240MHz, that will greatly facilitate observing pulsars at low radio frequencies. Through the huge collecting area, long baselines, and flexible digital hardware, it is expected that LOFAR will revolutionize radio astronomy at the lowest frequencies visible from Earth. LOFAR is a next-generation radio telescope and a pathfinder to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), in that it incorporates advanced multi-beaming techniques between thousands of individual elements. We discuss the motivation for low-frequency pulsar observations in general and the potential of LOFAR in addressing these science goals. We present LOFAR as it is designed to perform high-time-resolution observations of pulsars and other fast transients, and outline the various relevant observing modes and data reduction pipelines that are already or will soon be implemented to facilitate these observations. A number of results obtained from commissioning observations are presented to demonstrate the exciting potential of the telescope. This paper outlines the case for low frequency pulsar observations and is also intended to serve as a reference for upcoming pulsar/fast transient science papers with LOFAR.

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arXiv2011

An air shower array for LOFAR: LORA

LOFAR is a new form of radio telescope which can detect radio emission from air showers induced by very high-energy cosmic rays. It can also look for radio emission from particle cascades on the Moon induced by ultra high-energy cosmic rays or neutrinos. To complement the radio detection, we are setting up a small particle detector array LORA (LOfar Radboud Air shower array) within an area of $\sim 300$ m diameter in the LOFAR core. It will help in triggering and confirming the radio detection of air showers with the LOFAR antennas. In this paper, we present a short overview about LORA and discuss its current status.

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arXiv2010

On noise treatment in radio measurements of cosmic ray air showers

Precise measurements of the radio emission by cosmic ray air showers require an adequate treatment of noise. Unlike to usual experiments in particle physics, where noise always adds to the signal, radio noise can in principle decrease or increase the signal if it interferes by chance destructively or constructively. Consequently, noise cannot simply be subtracted from the signal, and its influence on amplitude and time measurement of radio pulses must be studied with care. First, noise has to be determined consistently with the definition of the radio signal which typically is the maximum field strength of the radio pulse. Second, the average impact of noise on radio pulse measurements at individual antennas is studied for LOPES. It is shown that a correct treatment of noise is especially important at low signal-to-noise ratios: noise can be the dominant source of uncertainty for pulse height and time measurements, and it can systematically flatten the slope of lateral distributions. The presented method can also be transfered to other experiments in radio and acoustic detection of cosmic rays and neutrinos.

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arXiv2010

New method for the time calibration of an interferometric radio antenna array

Digital radio antenna arrays, like LOPES (LOFAR PrototypE Station), detect high-energy cosmic rays via the radio emission from atmospheric extensive air showers. LOPES is an array of dipole antennas placed within and triggered by the KASCADE-Grande experiment on site of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. The antennas are digitally combined to build a radio interferometer by forming a beam into the air shower arrival direction which allows measurements even at low signal-to-noise ratios in individual antennas. This technique requires a precise time calibration. A combination of several calibration steps is used to achieve the necessary timing accuracy of about 1 ns. The group delays of the setup are measured, the frequency dependence of these delays (dispersion) is corrected in the subsequent data analysis, and variations of the delays with time are monitored. We use a transmitting reference antenna, a beacon, which continuously emits sine waves at known frequencies. Variations of the relative delays between the antennas can be detected and corrected for at each recorded event by measuring the phases at the beacon frequencies.

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arXiv2009

Air Shower Measurements with LOFAR

Air showers from cosmic rays emit short, intense radio pulses. LOFAR is a new radio telescope, that is being built in the Netherlands and Europe. Designed primarily as a radio interferometer, the core of LOFAR will have a high density of radio antennas, which will be extremely well calibrated. This makes LOFAR a unique tool for the study of the radio properties of single air showers. Triggering on the radio emission from air showers means detecting a short radio pulse and discriminating real events from radio interference. At LOFAR we plan to search for pulses in the digital data stream - either from single antennas or from already beam-formed data - and calculate several parameters characterizing the pulse shape to pick out real events in a second stage. In addition, we will have a small scintillator array to test and confirm the performance of the radio only trigger.

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arXiv2006

A very brief description of LOFAR - the Low Frequency Array

LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) is an innovative radio telescope optimized for the frequency range 30-240 MHz. The telescope is realized as a phased aperture array without any moving parts. Digital beam forming allows the telescope to point to any part of the sky within a second. Transient buffering makes retrospective imaging of explosive short-term events possible. The scientific focus of LOFAR will initially be on four key science projects (KSPs): 1) detection of the formation of the very first stars and galaxies in the universe during the so-called epoch of reionization by measuring the power spectrum of the neutral hydrogen 21-cm line (Shaver et al. 1999) on the ~5' scale; 2) low-frequency surveys of the sky with of order $10^8$ expected new sources; 3) all-sky monitoring and detection of transient radio sources such as gamma-ray bursts, x-ray binaries, and exo-planets (Farrell et al. 2004); and 4) radio detection of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos (Falcke & Gorham 2003) allowing for the first time access to particles beyond 10^21 eV (Scholten et al. 2006). Apart from the KSPs open access for smaller projects is also planned. Here we give a brief description of the telescope.

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