964 research outputs found
Polarized radio emission from extensive air showers measured with LOFAR
We present LOFAR measurements of radio emission from extensive air showers.
We find that this emission is strongly polarized, with a median degree of
polarization of nearly , and that the angle between the polarization
direction of the electric field and the Lorentz force acting on the particles,
depends on the observer location in the shower plane. This can be understood as
a superposition of the radially polarized charge-excess emission mechanism,
first proposed by Askaryan and the geomagnetic emission mechanism proposed by
Kahn and Lerche. We calculate the relative strengths of both contributions, as
quantified by the charge-excess fraction, for individual air showers. We
find that the measured charge-excess fraction is higher for air showers
arriving from closer to the zenith. Furthermore, the measured charge-excess
fraction also increases with increasing observer distance from the air shower
symmetry axis. The measured values range from for very
inclined air showers at to for almost
vertical showers at . Both dependencies are in qualitative
agreement with theoretical predictions.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in JCA
The radio emission pattern of air showers as measured with LOFAR - a tool for the reconstruction of the energy and the shower maximum
The pattern of the radio emission of air showers is finely sampled with the
Low-Frequency ARray (LOFAR). A set of 382 measured air showers is used to test
a fast, analytic parameterization of the distribution of pulse powers. Using
this parameterization we are able to reconstruct the shower axis and give
estimators for the energy of the air shower as well as the distance to the
shower maximum.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in JCA
Calibration of the LOFAR low-band antennas using the Galaxy and a model of the signal chain
The LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is used to make precise measurements of radio
emission from extensive air showers, yielding information about the primary
cosmic ray. Interpreting the measured data requires an absolute and
frequency-dependent calibration of the LOFAR system response. This is
particularly important for spectral analyses, because the shape of the detected
signal holds information about the shower development. We revisit the
calibration of the LOFAR antennas in the range of 30 - 80 MHz. Using the
Galactic emission and a detailed model of the LOFAR signal chain, we find an
improved calibration that provides an absolute energy scale and allows for the
study of frequency-dependent features in measured signals. With the new
calibration, systematic uncertainties of 13% are reached, and comparisons of
the spectral shape of calibrated data with simulations show promising
agreement.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure
Realtime processing of LOFAR data for the detection of nano-second pulses from the Moon
The low flux of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) at the highest
energies provides a challenge to answer the long standing question about their
origin and nature. Even lower fluxes of neutrinos with energies above
eV are predicted in certain Grand-Unifying-Theories (GUTs) and e.g.\ models for
super-heavy dark matter (SHDM). The significant increase in detector volume
required to detect these particles can be achieved by searching for the
nano-second radio pulses that are emitted when a particle interacts in Earth's
moon with current and future radio telescopes.
In this contribution we present the design of an online analysis and trigger
pipeline for the detection of nano-second pulses with the LOFAR radio
telescope. The most important steps of the processing pipeline are digital
focusing of the antennas towards the Moon, correction of the signal for
ionospheric dispersion, and synthesis of the time-domain signal from the
polyphased-filtered signal in frequency domain. The implementation of the
pipeline on a GPU/CPU cluster will be discussed together with the computing
performance of the prototype.Comment: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Computing in High
Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP2016), US
Cosmic Ray Physics with the LOFAR Radio Telescope
The LOFAR radio telescope is able to measure the radio emission from cosmic
ray induced air showers with hundreds of individual antennas. This allows for
precision testing of the emission mechanisms for the radio signal as well as
determination of the depth of shower maximum , the shower observable
most sensitive to the mass of the primary cosmic ray, to better than 20
g/cm. With a densely instrumented circular area of roughly 320 m, LOFAR
is targeting for cosmic ray astrophysics in the energy range -
eV. In this contribution we give an overview of the status, recent
results, and future plans of cosmic ray detection with the LOFAR radio
telescope.Comment: Proceedings of the 26th Extended European Cosmic Ray Symposium
(ECRS), Barnaul/Belokurikha, 201
Finite-region stabilization via dynamic output feedback for 2-D Roesser models
Finite-region stability (FRS), a generalization of finite-time stability, has been used to analyze the transient behavior of discrete two-dimensional (2-D) systems. In this paper, we consider the problem of FRS for discrete 2-D Roesser models via dynamic output feedback. First, a sufficient condition is given to design the dynamic output feedback controller with a state feedback-observer structure, which ensures the closed-loop system FRS. Then, this condition is reducible to a condition that is solvable by linear matrix inequalities. Finally, viable experimental results are demonstrated by an illustrative example
The Relationship of Lightning Radio Pulse Amplitudes and Source Altitudes as Observed by LOFAR
When a lightning flash is propagating in the atmosphere it is known that especially the negative leaders emit a large number of very high frequency (VHF) radio pulses. It is thought that this is due to streamer activity at the tip of the growing negative leader. In this work, we have investigated the dependence of the strength of this VHF emission on the altitude of such emission for two lightning flashes as observed by the Low Frequency ARray (LOFAR) radio telescope. We find for these two flashes that the extracted amplitude distributions are consistent with a power-law, and that the amplitude of the radio emissions decreases very strongly with source altitude, by more than a factor of 2 from 1 km altitude up to 5 km altitude. In addition, we do not find any dependence on the extracted power-law with altitude, and that the extracted power-law slope has an average around 3, for both flashes
On the cosmic-ray energy scale of the LOFAR radio telescope
Cosmic rays are routinely measured at LOFAR, both with a dense array of
antennas and with the LOFAR Radboud air shower Array (LORA) which is an array
of plastic scintillators. In this paper, we present two results relating to the
cosmic-ray energy scale of LOFAR. First, we present the reconstruction of
cosmic-ray energy using radio and particle techniques along with a discussion
of the event-by-event and absolute scale uncertainties. The resulting energies
reconstructed with each method are shown to be in good agreement, and because
the radio-based reconstructed energy has smaller uncertainty on an
event-to-event basis, LOFAR analyses will use that technique in the future.
Second, we present the radiation energy of air showers measured at LOFAR and
demonstrate how radiation energy can be used to compare the energy scales of
different experiments. The radiation energy scales quadratically with the
electromagnetic energy in an air shower, which can in turn be related to the
energy of the primary particle. Once the local magnetic field is accounted for,
the radiation energy allows for a direct comparison between the LORA
particle-based energy scale and that of the Pierre Auger Observatory. They are
shown to agree to within (620)% for a radiation energy of 1 MeV, where the
uncertainty on the comparison is dominated by the antenna calibrations of each
experiment. This study motivates the development of a portable radio array
which will be used to cross-calibrate the energy scales of different
experiments using radiation energy and the same antennas, thereby significantly
reducing the uncertainty on the comparison
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