Overview of radio experiments for UHE cosmic particles detection

TL;DR

Radio detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic particles is a mature, cost-effective technique with diverse applications across air, ice, and balloon experiments, enabling large-scale, high-sensitivity observations of rare cosmic events.

Contribution

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of past, current, and future radio experiments for UHE cosmic particle detection across various media.

Findings

Radio detection is insensitive to hadronic interaction uncertainties.

Large-scale radio experiments are being developed to improve sensitivity.

Radio techniques enable continuous, wide-area coverage for UHE particle detection.

Abstract

Radio-detection is a mature technique that has gained large momentum over the past decades. Its physical detection principle is mainly driven by the electromagnetic part of the shower, and is therefore not too sensitive to uncertainties on hadronic interactions. Furthermore its technical detection principle allows for a 100% duty cycle, and large surface coverage thanks to the low cost of antennas. Various detection methods of UHE particles now rely on the radio signal as main observable. For instance, ground based experiments such as AERA on the Pierre Auger Observatory or LOFAR detect the radio emission from air-showers induced by high-energy particles in the atmosphere; in-ice experiment such as ARA, IceCube, or ARIANNA benefits from a detection in denser media which reduces the interaction lengths; finally, balloon experiments such as ANITA allow for very sensitive UHE neutrino detection with only a few antennas. Radio-detection is now focused on building increasingly large-scale radio experiments to enhance the detector sensitivity and address the low fluxes at UHE. In this proceeding we give an overview of the past, current and future experiments for the detection of UHE cosmic particles using the radio technique in air (AERA, Auger-Prime, GRAND), in balloon (ANITA, PUEO) or in other media (IceCube-Gen2, BEACON, RNO-G).