September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Olaf Scholten For the NuMoon collaboration KVI, Groningen
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Physics of Cosmic rays Spectrum is power law Flux ~ E -3 Non thermal spectrum! There must be sources! Where? What? End point? This talk: Measurement at highest E ( Area Moon = km 2 ) F(E) [ m 2 sr s GeV ] -1 E [eV ] ← 32 orders of magnitude ← 12 orders of magnitude ← 1 [m -2 s -1 ] 1 [km -2 y -1 ] UHECR E -2.7
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Cosmic ray or neutrino 100MHz Radio waves Detection: LOFAR Principle of the measurement 10 7 km 2
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Askaryan effect: Coherent Cherenkov emission Leading cloud of electrons, v c Typical size of order 10cm Coherent Čerenkov for ν 2-5 GHz cos θ c =1/n, θ c =56 o for ∞ shower length Length of shower, L few m Important for angular spreading ~10 cm ~2 m Cosmic ray or neutrino shower Wave front nano second pulses
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Use Westerbork radio observatory NuMoon WSRT 4 frequencies
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Trigger: pulse in all four frequency bands + dedispersion 18 TB raw data per 6 hr slot TimeFrequency Excise RFI Trigger
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Trigger Power Spectrum Gaussian noise Effect successive steps in analysis
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Prelimenary Results Analysis of 20 h data Data taking is continuing NuMoon collaboration: O.S., Stijn Buitink, Heino Falcke, Ben Stappers, Kalpana Singh, Richard Strom
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Future: LOFAR SKA, 1 year, LFB: MHz MFB: MHz From: O.S., SKA Design Study report LOFAR Core 1 month E-LOFAR, 1 year
September 16-19, 2008 Hamburg 2008 Conclusions Detection of Ultra-High Enegy cosmic rays & neutrinos Physics: What are the sources? Challenge: implement real-time trigger in CEP LOFAR as observer of short (n-sec) intermittent pulses.