Properties of the Lunar Detection Mode for ZeV-Scale Particles with LOFAR

¹ Astrophysical Institute, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
² Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands
³ NIKHEF, Science Park Amsterdam, 1098 XG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
⁴ Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), Postbus 2, 7990 AA, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands
⁵ KVI-CART, University Groningen, P.O. Box 72, 9700 AB, Groningen
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Irvine, 92697-4575, Irvine, CA, USA
⁷ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton,NJ, 08544, USA
⁸ Interuniversity Institute for High-Energy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
⁹ Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Linnéuniversitetet, 35195, Växjö, Sweden

^★ e-mail: tobias.winchen@rwth-aachen.de; This work is funded by ERC grant 640130 and DFG grant WI 4946/1-1

Published online: 24 September 2019

Abstract

The steep decrease of the flux of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) provides a challenge to answer the long standing question about their origin and nature. A significant increase in detector volume may be achieved byemploying Earth’s moon as a detector that is read out using existing Earth-bound radio telescopes by searching for the radio pulses emitted by the particle shower in the lunar rock. In this contribution we will report on the properties of a corresponding detection mode currently under development for the LOFAR Radio telescope.