| 28th of September 2016 |
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| ATNF Colloquium |
| Radio detection of high-energy cosmic rays |
| by Justin Bray (University of Manchester) |
| Abstract. High-energy cosmic rays,
when they interact in a medium such as the
terrestrial atmosphere or the lunar regolith, produce a cascade of
particles which emits a radio pulse. By detecting these pulses, it is
possible to detect and study the cosmic rays that produced them. After
a long period of development - the first radio detection of cosmic rays
was in 1965 - this technique has now reached the point where radio
detection of atmospheric cosmic rays is slightly more precise than other
techniques, allowing detailed studies of cosmic-ray composition and
high-energy particle physics; and the first detection of a lunar
cosmic-ray interaction is a practical possibility, with scope for
extending the upper bound of the observed cosmic-ray spectrum and
finding the direction of a source of these particles. I will discuss
some of the technical details of this technique, the current state of
the field, and prospects for the future. Image: Simulated radio footprint of a cosmic-ray air-shower on the low-frequency core of the Square Kilometre Array (by A. Zilles, presented at ARENA 2016, Groningen) |