1. Air shower measurements with LOFAR
- Author
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Horneffer, A., Bähren, L., Buitink, S., Falcke, H., Hörandel, J.R., Kuijpers, J., Lafebre, S., Nigl, A., Scholten, O., and Singh, K.
- Subjects
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COSMIC ray showers , *MEASUREMENT , *RADIO waves , *RADIO telescopes , *RADIO interferometers , *RADIO interference - Abstract
Abstract: Air showers from cosmic rays emit short, intense radio pulses. The Low Frequency Array (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. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2009
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