Speaker
Description
Large-area detector arrays such as the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array (TA) have made significant progress in detecting inclined cosmic-ray air showers (with zenith angles > 60°), which provide a powerful tool for studying ultra-high-energy particles. Combining a sparse antenna array with surface detectors, the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) has already detected inclined air showers with an angular resolution of 1.4°. It has therefore been commonly assumed that detecting such showers with higher reconstruction precision requires a very large-scale detector array, whereas most existing radio detection arrays cover only relatively small areas.
Recently, progress has been made in the radio-signal modeling of inclined air showers, and the associated reconstruction techniques are being optimized. Moreover, the unprecedented antenna density of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) enables ultra-high-precision measurements within a small footprint. This opens up the possibility of precisely reconstructing large-zenith-angle air showers by fitting data from small-scale arrays—even when the shower cores lie outside the antenna array.
In this work, we use simulated data to investigate the feasibility of detecting large-zenith-angle air showers with SKA-Low. The ability to detect large-zenith-angle air showers using small-area arrays would greatly enhance the performance of relevant experiments.