Alan Coleman - Detecting Cosmic Rays with Radio Antennas at the South Pole

Friday 21 Apr 2023, 10:00 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

Villa (DESY)

The IceTop cosmic ray detector is located at the South Pole and has been operating for over a decade. There are several properties that make this detector unique aside from its location including the cubic kilometer of instrumented ice below the surface, which constitutes the IceCube Observatory. With the combined information on the surface and in the ice, the highest-energy content of the air showers can be studied directly, probing both particle physics at super-LHC phase spaces and astrophysics via the cosmic ray composition. To increase the performance of the observatory, additional detectors will be added to the IceTop footprint including radio antennas and scintillator panels. The antennas will increase the sensitivity of the array to the electrons and positrons that make up the bulk of the energy content of the cascades that are created when cosmic rays interact high in Earth's atmosphere. In this talk I will discuss the IceTop array, the challenges that arise from being located at the South Pole, and the outlook for the enhancement of the surface array with radio antennas.

2023.04.21 - DESY Seminar Coleman.pdf