Relative Calibration of the AugerPrime Radio Detector at the Pierre Auger Observatory
A. Reuzki* and  for the Pierre Auger Collaboration
*: corresponding author
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Pre-published on: September 02, 2026
Published on:
Abstract
Radio emissions of extensive air showers can be observed with the AugerPrime radio detector (RD) at the Pierre Auger Observatory. As part of the AugerPrime upgrade, RD has been installed on $1660$ water-Cherenkov detectors over an area of roughly $3000 \text{ km}^2$ and consists of dual-polarized Short Aperiodic Loaded Loop Antennas (SALLA). To achieve high measurement precision, the SALLA must be well calibrated, which requires the antenna response pattern to be well known. Here, we introduce a direction-dependent relative calibration using a well-defined biconical antenna mounted to a drone. The drone-based setup provides active stabilization and precise aiming using a gimbal. Additionally, the position of the drone is tracked using differential GPS with a precision of up to $1$ cm. This setup allows us to precisely extract the antenna response pattern for any arrival direction. Building on the experience of a previous campaign, a second in-situ calibration campaign of the RD was carried out in March/April $2026$ with an improved setup and procedure. A novel approach based on Information Field Theory is implemented to reconstruct the full antenna response pattern across all arrival directions and frequencies from a set of sparse measurements. First results of the full antenna response pattern are presented.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.538.0014
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