Towards real-time cosmic-ray identification with the LOw Frequency ARay

¹ Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9010, 6500, GL Nijmegen The Netherlands
² Astrophysical Institute, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
³ NIKHEF, Science Park Amsterdam, 1098, XG Amsterdam The Netherlands
⁴ Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), Postbus 2, 7990, AA Dwingeloo The Netherland
⁵ KVI-CART, University Groningen, P.O. Box 72, 9700, AB Groningen The Netherland
⁶ DESY, Platanenallee 6, 15738, Zeuthen Germany
⁷ Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Physik, Newtonstrasse 15, 12489, Berlin Germany
⁸ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
⁹ Interuniversity Institute for High-Energy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels Belgium
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Linnéuniversitetet, 35195, Växjö, Sweden

^★ e-mail: a.bonardi@astro.ru.nl

Published online: 24 September 2019

Abstract

The radio signals emitted by Extensive Air Showers have been successfully used for the last decade by LOFAR to reconstruct the properties of the primary cosmic rays. Since an effective real-time recognition system for the very short radio pulses is lacking, cosmic-ray acquisition is currently triggered by an external array of particle detector, called LORA, limiting the LOFAR collecting area to the area covered by LORA. A new algorithm for the real-time cosmic-ray detection has been developed for the LOFAR Low Band Antenna, which are sensitive between 10 and 90 MHz, and is here presented together with the latest results.