Reconstruction of cosmic ray air shower core location at SURA experiment

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to reconstruct the core location of cosmic ray air showers using radio array data, achieving a minimum error of about 6 meters, and discusses optimizations for better accuracy and efficiency.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel comparison-based reconstruction method using simulated reference arrays for the SURA experiment.

Findings

Core location can be reconstructed with ~6 m error.

Error increases when shower characteristics differ from the reference.

Proposed optimizations improve accuracy and reduce simulation time.

Abstract

SURA is a self-triggered radio array on the roof of physics faculty at Semnan university in Iran. It is designed to detect radio emissions from air showers produced by ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic rays with energies exceeding 1017 eV. The array consists of 4 LPDA radio antennas operating in the 40 MHz to 80 MHz range. In this study, we present a method that compares the signal intensities of simulated and experimental data. Specifically, we use a simulated dense array with a large number of antennas as a reference. By comparing the experimental signal intensity of each antenna to that of the corresponding antenna in the reference array, we can reconstruct the cosmic ray air shower core location. We first validate our method on simulated events to estimate the associated error. Afterward, we apply the technique to the cosmic ray candidates detected by the SURA array. Our results show that the core location can be reconstructed with a minimum error of about 6 m. However, when the characteristics of the shower being reconstructed differ significantly from the reference array, the error increases. Finally, we propose optimizations to improve reconstruction accuracy and reduce simulation time.