Detecting cosmic rays with the LOFAR radio telescope

Astronomy and Astrophysics 560 (2013)

Authors:

P Schellart, A Nelles, S Buitink, A Corstanje, JE Enriquez, H Falcke, W Frieswijk, JR Horandel, A Horneffer, CW James, M Krause, M Mevius, O Scholten, S Ter Veen, S Thoudam, M Van Den Akker, A Alexov, J Anderson, IM Avruch, L Bahren, R Beck, ME Bell, P Bennema, MJ Bentum, G Bernardi, P Best, J Bregman, F Breitling, M Brentjens, J Broderick, M Bruggen, B Ciardi, A Coolen, F De Gasperin, E De Geus, A De Jong, M De Vos, S Duscha, J Eisloffel, RA Fallows, C Ferrari, MA Garrett, J Grießmeier, T Grit, JP Hamaker, TE Hassall, G Heald, JWT Hessels, M Hoeft, HA Holties, M Iacobelli, E Juette, A Karastergiou, W Klijn, J Kohler, VI Kondratiev, M Kramer, M Kuniyoshi, G Kuper, P Maat, G Macario, G Mann, S Markoff, D McKay-Bukowski, JP McKean, JCA Miller-Jones, JD Mol, DD Mulcahy, H Munk, R Nijboer, MJ Norden, E Orru, R Overeem, H Paas, M Pandey-Pommier, R Pizzo, AG Polatidis, A Renting, JW Romein, H Rottgering, A Schoenmakers, D Schwarz, J Sluman, O Smirnov, C Sobey, BW Stappers, M Steinmetz, J Swinbank, Y Tang, C Tasse, C Toribio, J Van Leeuwen, R Van Nieuwpoort, RJ Van Weeren, N Vermaas, R Vermeulen, C Vocks, C Vogt, RAMJ Wijers, SJ Wijnholds

Abstract:

The low frequency array (LOFAR), is the first radio telescope designed with the capability to measure radio emission from cosmic-ray induced air showers in parallel with interferometric observations. In the first ~2 years of observing, 405 cosmic-ray events in the energy range of 1016-1018 eV have been detected in the band from 30-80 MHz. Each of these air showers is registered with up to ~1000 independent antennas resulting in measurements of the radio emission with unprecedented detail. This article describes the dataset, as well as the analysis pipeline, and serves as a reference for future papers based on these data. All steps necessary to achieve a full reconstruction of the electric field at every antenna position are explained, including removal of radio frequency interference, correcting for the antenna response and identification of the pulsed signal. © ESO, 2013.

Radio Detections During Two State Transitions of the Intermediate Mass Black Hole HLX-1

(2013)

Authors:

Natalie Webb, David Cseh, Emil Lenc, Olivier Godet, Didier Barret, Stephane Corbel, Sean Farrell, Rob Fender, Neil Gehrels, Ian Heywood

Uncovering the physics behind the blazar sequence using a realistic model for jet emission

(2013)

Authors:

William J Potter, Garret Cotter

New constraints on the cooling of the Central Compact Object in Cas A

(2013)

Authors:

B Posselt, GG Pavlov, V Suleimanov, O Kargaltsev

H-ATLAS: Estimating redshifts of herschel sources from sub-mm fluxes

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 435:4 (2013) 2753-2763

Authors:

EA Pearson, S Eales, L Dunne, J Gonzalez-Nuevo, S Maddox, JE Aguirre, M Baes, AJ Baker, N Bourne, CM Bradford, CJR Clark, A Cooray, A Dariush, G De Zotti, S Dye, D Frayer, HL Gomez, AI Harris, R Hopwood, E Ibar, RJ Ivison, M Jarvis, M Krips, A Lapi, RE Lupu, MJ Michałowski, M Rosenman, D Scott, E Valiante, I Valtchanov, P van der Werf, JD Vieira

Abstract:

Upon its completion, the Herschel Astrophysics Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS) will be the largest sub-millimetre survey to date, detecting close to half-a-million sources. It will only be possible to measure spectroscopic redshifts for a small fraction of these sources. However, if the rest-frame spectral energy distribution (SED) of a typical H-ATLAS source is known, this SED and the observed Herschel fluxes can be used to estimate the redshifts of the H-ATLAS sources without spectroscopic redshifts. In this paper, we use a sub-set of 40 H-ATLAS sources with previously measured redshifts in the range 0.5 < z < 4.2 to derive a suitable average template for high-redshift H-ATLAS sources. We find that a template with two dust components (Tc= 23.9K, Th= 46.9K and ratio of mass of cold dust to mass of warm dust of 30.1) provides a good fit to the rest-frame fluxes of the sources in our calibration sample. We use a jackknife technique to estimate the accuracy of the redshifts estimated with this template, finding a root mean square of Δz/(1 + z) = 0.26. For sources for which there is prior information that they lie at z > 1, we estimate that the rms of Δz/(1 + z) = 0.12. We have used this template to estimate the redshift distribution for the sources detected in the H-ATLAS equatorial fields, finding a bimodal distribution with a mean redshift of 1.2, 1.9 and 2.5 for 250, 350 and 500 μm selected sources, respectively. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.