An Interferometric Analysis Method for Radio Impulses from Ultra-high Energy Particle Showers

TL;DR

This paper introduces an interferometric technique for reconstructing ultra-wide band impulsive signals from point sources, enhancing detection and analysis of radio impulses from ultra-high energy particle showers, with applications in neutrino detection and background rejection.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel interferometric method for radio impulsive signal reconstruction, applicable to ultra-high energy neutrino searches and general antenna array analyses.

Findings

Effective event reconstruction demonstrated with ANITA data

Improved background rejection capabilities

Potential for solar imaging calibration

Abstract

We present an interferometric technique for the reconstruction of ultra-wide band impulsive signals from point sources. This highly sensitive method was developed for the search for ultra-high energy neutrinos with the ANITA experiment but is fully generalizable to any antenna array detecting radio impulsive events. Applications of the interferometric method include event reconstruction, thermal noise and anthropogenic background rejection, and solar imaging for calibrations. We illustrate this technique with applications from the analysis of the ANITA-I and ANITA-II data in the 200-1200 MHz band.