This content will become publicly available on March 18, 2023

Modeling and Validating RF-Only Interferometric Triggering with Cosmic Rays for BEACON
When Earth-skimming tau neutrinos interact within the Earth, they generate upgoing tau leptons that can decay in the atmosphere, forming extensive air showers. The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is a novel detector concept that utilizes a radio interferometer atop a mountain to search for the radio emission due to these extensive air showers. The prototype, located at the White Mountain Research Station in California, consists of 4 crossed-dipole antennas operating in the 30-80 MHz range and uses a directional interferometric trigger for reduced thresholds and background rejection. The prototype will first be used to detect down-going cosmic rays to validate the detector model. A Monte-Carlo simulation was developed to predict the acceptance of the prototype to cosmic rays, as well as the expected rate of detection. In this simulation, cosmic ray induced air showers with random properties are generated in an area around the prototype array. It is then determined if a given shower triggers the array using radio emission simulations from ZHAireS and antenna modelling from XFdtd. Here, we present the methodology and results of this simulation.
Authors:
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Award ID(s):
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10319912
Journal Name:
37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2021)
Volume:
395
3. Abstract The hybrid design of the Pierre Auger Observatory allows for the measurement of the properties of extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays with unprecedented precision. By using an array of prototype underground muon detectors, we have performed the first direct measurement, by the Auger Collaboration, of the muon content of air showers between $$2\times 10^{17}$$ 2 × 10 17 and $$2\times 10^{18}$$ 2 × 10 18 eV. We have studied the energy evolution of the attenuation-corrected muon density, and compared it to predictions from air shower simulations. The observed densities are found to be larger than those predicted by models. We quantify this discrepancy by combining the measurements from the muon detector with those from the Auger fluorescence detector at $$10^{{17.5}}\, {\mathrm{eV}}$$ 10 17.5 eV and $$10^{{18}}\, {\mathrm{eV}}$$ 10 18 eV . We find that, for the models to explain the data, an increase in the muon density of $$38\%$$ 38 % $$\pm 4\% (12\%)$$ ± 4 % ( 12 % ) $$\pm {}^{21\%}_{18\%}$$ ± 18 % 21 % for EPOS-LHC , and of $$50\% (53\%)$$ 50 % ( 53 % ) $$\pm 4\% (13\%)$$ ± 4 % ( 13 % ) $$\pm {}^{23\%}_{20\%}$$more »
5. We report on a measurement of the cosmic-ray composition by the Telescope Array Low-energy Extension (TALE) air fluorescence detector (FD). By making use of the Cherenkov light signal in addition to air fluorescence light from cosmic-ray (CR)-induced extensive air showers, the TALE FD can measure the properties of the cosmic rays with energies as low as ~2 PeV and exceeding 1 EeV. In this paper, we present results on the measurement of ${X}_{\max }$ distributions of showers observed over this energy range. Data collected over a period of ~4 yr were analyzed for this study. The resulting ${X}_{\max }$ distributions are compared to the Monte Carlo (MC) simulated data distributions for primary cosmic rays with varying composition and a four-component fit is performed. The comparison and fit are performed for energy bins, of width 0.1 or 0.2 in ${\mathrm{log}}_{10}(E/\mathrm{eV})$, spanning the full range of the measured energies. We also examine the mean ${X}_{\max }$ value as a function of energy for cosmic rays with energies greater than 1015.8 eV. Below 1017.3 eV, the slope of the mean ${X}_{\max }$ as a function of energy (the elongation rate) for the data is significantly smaller than that of all elements in themore »