Minimal prospects for radio detection of extensive air showers in the atmosphere of Jupiter

J. D. Bray, A. Nelles
(Submitted on 3 Jun 2016)

One possible approach for detecting ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos is to search for radio emission from extensive air showers created when they interact in the atmosphere of Jupiter, effectively utilizing Jupiter as a particle detector. We investigate the potential of this approach. For searches with current or planned radio telescopes we find that the effective area for detection of cosmic rays is substantial (~3*10^7 km^2), but the acceptance angle is so small that the typical geometric aperture (~10^3 km^2 sr) is less than that of existing terrestrial detectors, and cosmic rays also cannot be detected below an extremely high threshold energy (~10^23 eV). The geometric aperture for neutrinos is slightly larger, and greater sensitivity can be achieved with a radio detector on a Jupiter-orbiting satellite, but in neither case is this sufficient to constitute a practical detection technique. Exploitation of the large surface area of Jupiter for detecting ultra-high-energy particles remains a long-term prospect that will require a different technique, such as orbital fluorescence detection.

Comments: 15 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ
Subjects: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:1606.01291 [astro-ph.HE]
(or arXiv:1606.01291v1 [astro-ph.HE] for this version)
Submission history
From: Justin Bray
[v1] Fri, 3 Jun 2016 22:11:24 GMT (301kb)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01291