Detecting radio emission from cosmic ray air showers and neutrinos with a digital radio telescope

We discuss the possibilities of measuring ultra-high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos with radio techniques. We review a few of the properties of radio emission from cosmic ray air showers and show how these properties can be explained by coherent “geosynchrotron” emission from electron–positron pairs in the shower as they move through the geomagnetic field. This should allow one to use the radio emission as a useful diagnostic tool for cosmic ray research. A new generation of digital telescopes will make it possible to study this radio emission in greater detail. For example, the planned low-frequency array (LOFAR), operating at 10–200 MHz, will be an instrument uniquely suited to study extensive air showers and even detect neutrino-induced showers on the moon. We discuss sensitivities, count rates and possible detection algorithms for LOFAR and a currently funded prototype station LOPES. This should also be applicable to other future digital radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). LOFAR will be capable of detecting air-shower radio emission from >2×1014 to ∼1020 eV. The technique could be easily extended to include air shower arrays consisting of particle detectors (KASCADE, Auger), thus providing crucial additional information for obtaining energy and chemical composition of cosmic rays. It also has the potential to extend the cosmic ray search well beyond an energy of 1021 eV if isotropic radio signatures can be found. Other issues that LOFAR can address are to determine the neutral component of the cosmic ray spectrum, possibly look for neutron bursts, and do actual cosmic ray astronomy.