Tapping the full potential of LOFAR cosmic-ray mass composition measurements with next-generation Monte Carlo simulations of radio emission from extensive air showers

为了了解宇宙射线的起源，精确测量入射粒子的能量和质量是必不可少的。利用对大范围空气簇射的无线电探测，已经实现了对宇宙射线质量组成的非常精确的测量，特别是利用射电天文望远镜LOFAR。然而，到目前为止开发的分析并没有使用来自广泛的空气簇射的无线电信号的全部信息内容：为了限制所需的计算时间，仅在规则网格上进行蒙特卡洛模拟的信号计算，然后进行时间积分和空间插值。目前，这种方法造成的信息损失限制了质量组成测量的可实现分辨率。在这个项目中，我们建议执行显式Monte Carlo模拟的无线电信号从广泛的空气淋浴在LOFAR天线的位置，使它们可以与测量数据。这种方法增加了参数空间的维数，需要从二维到四维的Monte Carlo模拟进行探测。为了科普随之而来的大量增加的计算时间，我们计划实施GPU并行化的Monte Carlo模拟无线电发射的空气淋浴的框架中的“CORSIKA 8”框架目前正在开发中。

To understand the origin of cosmic rays, precise measurements of the energy and mass of the incoming particles are essential. Using radio detection of extensive air showers, very precise measurements of the mass composition of cosmic rays have already been achieved, in particular by the radio-astronomical telescope LOFAR. However, the analyses developed so far do not use the full information content of radio signals from extensive air showers: To limit the needed computation time, signal calculations with Monte Carlo simulations are only performed on a regular grid, followed by a time integration and spatial interpolation. The information loss incurred by this procedure currently limits the achievable resolution for mass composition measurements. In this project, we propose to perform explicit Monte Carlo simulations of radio signals from extensive air showers at the positions of the LOFAR antennas so that they can be correlated with the measured data. This approach increases the dimensionality of the parameter space that needs to be probed with Monte Carlo simulations from two to four dimensions. To cope with the ensuing massive increase of computing time, we plan to implement GPU parallelization of the Monte Carlo simulations of radio emission from air showers in the framework of the "CORSIKA 8" framework currently under development.