Thinned simulations of extremely energetic showers in dense media for radio applications

J. Alvarez-Muñiz , C.W. James , R.J. Protheroe , E. Zas

This paper presents our results for full 3-D simulations of very-high to ultra-high energy electromagnetic cascades - and the associated coherent Cherenkov radiation - as might be produced by high-energy neutrino interactions in dense media. Using "thinning" techniques, we develop an algorithm based on the existing "ZHS" code, and demonstrate that the new "ZHS-thinned" code can produce fast and accurate results for showers up to 10 eV. Using ZHS-thinned, we develop new parameterisations for the radiation from showers in ice, salt, and the lunar regolith, with a separate treatment of the megaregolith (deep regolith). Our parameterisations include for the first time a method to simulate fluctuations in shower length induced by the LPM effect. Our results, which avoid the pit-falls of scaling simulations from lower energies, allow improved calculations of the detection probability for experiments searching for high-energy neutrinos using the radio technique.

Mots clés: 95.85.Bh; 95.85.Ry; 29.40.-n; High energy cosmic rays and neutrinos; high energy showers; Cherenkov radio emission

J. Alvarez-Muñiz, C.W. James, R.J. Protheroe, E. Zas. Thinned simulations of extremely energetic showers in dense media for radio applications. Astroparticle Physics, 2009, 32 (2), pp.100. ⟨10.1016/j.astropartphys.2009.06.005⟩. ⟨hal-00598194⟩