A reconstruction procedure for near horizon extensive air showers based on radio signals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new hybrid radio signal-based reconstruction method for very inclined extensive air showers, improving the accuracy of arrival direction, energy, and composition estimations for next-generation radio arrays.

Contribution

It presents a novel reconstruction procedure utilizing arrival times and amplitudes, modeling spherical wavefronts and an angular distribution function to analyze inclined air showers.

Findings

Achieves arrival direction accuracy within 0.1 degrees.

Shows potential for accurate energy and composition reconstruction.

Demonstrates robustness against experimental uncertainties.

Abstract

Very inclined extensive air showers (EAS), with both down-going and up-going trajectories, are particularly targeted by the next generation of extended radio arrays, such as GRAND. Methods to reconstruct the incoming direction, core position, primary energy and composition of showers with these specific geometries, remain to be developed. Towards that goal, we present a new reconstruction procedure based on the arrival times and the amplitudes of the radio signal, measured at each antenna station. This hybrid reconstruction method, harnesses the fact that the emission is observed, at the antenna level, far away from the emission region, thus allowing for a point-like emission description. Thanks to this assumption, the arrival times are modelled following a spherical wavefront emission, which offers the possibility to reconstruct the radio emission zone as a fixed point along the shower axis. From that point the amplitude distribution at the antenna level is described through an Angular Distribution Function (ADF) taking into account at once all geo-magnetic asymmetries and early late effects as well as additional signal asymmetries featured by very inclined EAS. This method shows promising results in terms of arrival direction reconstruction, within the 0.1{\deg} range, even when taking into account experimental uncertainties, and interesting potential for the energy reconstruction and primary composition identification.