Vectorial Radio Interferometry with LOPES 3D

TL;DR

The paper discusses the LOPES 3D experiment, which measures all three vector components of radio signals from cosmic rays, enhancing detection and reconstruction capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces the first measurement of all three electric field components simultaneously in a cosmic ray experiment, improving detection efficiency.

Findings

Measuring all polarization components increases detection efficiency.

Vertical polarization measurement provides additional insights.

Multi-channel data can be reconstructed from noisy single channels.

Abstract

One successful detection technique for high-energy cosmic rays is based on the radio signal emitted by the charged particles in an air shower. The LOPES experiment at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, has made major contributions to the evolution of this technique. LOPES was reconfigured several times to improve and further develop the radio detection technique. In the latest setup LOPES consisted of 10 tripole antennas. With this, LOPES 3D was the first cosmic ray experiment measuring all three vectorial field components at once and thereby gaining the full information about the electric field vector. We present an analysis based on the data taken with special focus on the benefits of a direct measurement of the vertical polarization component. We demonstrate that by measuring all polarization components the detection and reconstruction efficiency is increased and noisy single channel data can be reconstructed by utilising the information from the other two channels of one antenna station.