The radio emission pattern of air showers as measured with LOFAR - a tool for the reconstruction of the energy and the shower maximum

TL;DR

This paper uses LOFAR to finely sample radio emissions from air showers, developing a parameterization method to reconstruct shower properties like energy and maximum depth.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytic parameterization of radio emission patterns for air showers, enabling efficient reconstruction of key shower parameters.

Findings

Successful reconstruction of shower axis

Estimators for energy and shower maximum distance

Validated method with 382 measured air showers

Abstract

The pattern of the radio emission of air showers is finely sampled with the Low-Frequency ARray (LOFAR). A set of 382 measured air showers is used to test a fast, analytic parameterization of the distribution of pulse powers. Using this parameterization we are able to reconstruct the shower axis and give estimators for the energy of the air shower as well as the distance to the shower maximum.