Original title: Reconstruction of anomalous air showers with SKA-Low
Vital De Henau, Sjoerd Bouma, Justin Bray, Stijn Buitink +30 · September 2026
When high-energy particles hit Earth's atmosphere, they trigger massive cascades of secondary particles called extensive air showers. Computer simulations predict an unusual kind called a double-bump shower, but no experiment has directly detected one yet. These showers happen when a single energetic particle travels much farther down than the others. This creates two distinct peaks in the particle cascade. These events leave a special radio footprintThe pattern of radio signals emitted by the charged particles in the shower. marked by multiple signal pulses and wavy interference patternsVariations in radio frequency spectra caused by combining waves from different parts of the shower. across radio frequencies. The authors show that the future SKA-Low observatory will be the first capable of detecting these radio signatures thanks to its dense antenna array and wide frequency range. The team explains these signals, builds a simple two-point emission model to roughly estimate the depths of both peaks, and applies a brute-force approach to reconstruct multiple parameters of the double-bump profile.
Imagine packing a suitcase where most clothes go into the main compartment, but one sock slips into an outer pocket. Normally, you'd unpack everything to find it. In this paper, the double-bump shower is like that stray sock, and the radio signals are like tracking which pocket it ended up in without unpacking.
This matters for physicists studying cosmic rays because it could reveal details about particle interactions at energies we can't replicate in labs. By measuring the mass of incoming particles, it helps us understand the origins and nature of high-energy cosmic rays.
The abstract presents initial models and estimates, not validated observations, and does not confirm if SKA-Low can fully detect or reconstruct all parameters of double-bump showers. It focuses on the first steps toward using radio signatures, with rudimentary methods like a simple 2-point model.
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Reconstruction of anomalous air showers with SKA-Low — Vital De Henau, Sjoerd Bouma, Justin Bray et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.