https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5537-2
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Search for PeVatrons at the Galactic Center using a radio air-shower array at the South Pole
1
Institut für Experimentelle Teilchenphysik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
2
Institut für Kernphysik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology(KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
Received:
2
November
2017
Accepted:
10
January
2018
Published online:
6
February
2018
The South Pole, which hosts the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, has a complete and around-the-clock exposure to the Galactic Center. Hence, it is an ideal location to search for gamma rays of PeV energy coming from the Galactic Center. However, it is hard to detect air showers initiated by these gamma rays using cosmic-ray particle detectors due to the low elevation of the Galactic Center. The use of antennas to measure the radio footprint of these air showers will help in this case, and would allow for a 24/7 operation time. So far, only air showers with energies well above 
eV have been detected with the radio technique. Thus, the energy threshold has to be lowered for the detection of gamma-ray showers of PeV energy. This can be achieved by optimizing the frequency band in order to obtain a higher level of signal-to-noise ratio. With such an approach, PeV gamma-ray showers with high inclination can be measured at the South Pole.
© The Author(s) 2018
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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