Speaker
Description
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a next-generation radio telescope currently under construction in South Africa and Australia.
Its low-frequency part (50-350 MHz), located in Australia, features nearly 60,000 antennas in a core region of about 1 km diameter.
The unprecedented antenna density allows to observe individual cosmic-ray air showers to a level of detail no other observatory can match.
Hence, we adopt the same approach as done successfully at LOFAR, which is to put about 100 small (1 m$^2$) particle detectors alongside the radio array, which are used to trigger a readout of ring buffers storing the raw digitized voltages at the antennas.
We present the expected capabilities of this instrument, especially where it surpasses predecessors such as LOFAR. This includes the important science questions in the field, related to the mass composition of cosmic rays as well as the high-energy particle interactions at energies beyond e.g. LHC energies; measuring air showers at very high precision offers an opportunity to measure these, however indirectly, by their imprint on the radio signals as they arrive at the antennas.
We also present our current status on the way to realizing this observing mode at SKA-Low, which includes significant progress in developing and building the RFI-quiet particle detector array.
| Talk category | NOVA Network 3 |
|---|---|
| Second preference | Large infrastructure and instrumentation |
