The Renaissance of Radio Detection of Cosmic Rays

Nearly 50 years ago, the first radio signals from cosmic ray air showers were detected. After many successful studies, however, research ceased not even 10 years later. Only a decade ago, the field was revived with the application of powerful digital signal processing techniques. Since then, the detection technique has matured, and we are now in a phase of transition from small-scale experiments accessing energies below 10 ¹⁸ eV to experiments with a reach for energies beyond 10 ¹⁹ eV. We have demonstrated that air shower radio signals carry information on both the energy and the mass of the primary particle, and current experiments are in the process of quantifying the precision with which this information can be accessed. All of this rests on solid understanding of the radio emission processes which can be interpreted as a coherent superposition of geomagnetic emission, Askaryan charge-excess radiation, and Cherenkov-like coherence effects arising in the density gradient of the atmosphere. In this article, I highlight the “state of the art” of radio detection of cosmic rays and briefly discuss its perspectives for the next few years.