Tobias Degner Uni Bonn

Radiodetection of air showers at the South Pole (pdf)

While propagating through the earth’s magnetic field, charged particles in extensive air showers are deflected by the Lorentz force emitting a strongly beamed radio wave signal. As first demonstrated by the LOFAR experiment, this so-called geosynchroton radiation can be detected by an array of radio antennae on the ground. An extension of the existing IceTop air shower array using this technique is also planned at the South Pole above the IceCube detector. While this Radio Air Shower Test Array (RASTA) is still in the planning stage, a small number of antennae have already been installed at the South Pole and have been taking data for the last 2 years. In this talk I will explain the physics reach of the proposed radio extension to the IceCube observatory. Furthermore I will present my plans to analyze the data that been taken with the existing installations.