Beyond Xmax : Reconstructing Air Shower Profiles with Information Field Theory with SKA-Low
Abstract
While radio measurements of extensive air showers have shown to achieve a high precision of Xmax sensitivity, it has been shown that parameters beyond Xmax can also be reconstructed. These shape parameters contain additional sensitivity to the hadronic physics in the shower as well as its mass composition. In this work, we showcase a reconstruction framework to recover the full longitudinal profile from realistic radio measurements. The framework is based on Information Field Theory that infers the full profile with a forward-based model, which uses a Gaisser-Hillas profile with weakly informative shower priors, SMIET with a template library to synthesise pulses at any event geometry, and a realistic antenna response and noise level emulating that of SKA-Low. We verify the self-consistency of our framework with ∼ 900 events generated with SMIET with antennas placed on the v⃗ × (v⃗ × B⃗) axis. The framework recovers the full profile within uncertainty and capture correlations between shower parameters. We yield an Xmax resolution of < 9 g cm−2 as well as resolutions of the width and asymmetry with minimal bias. The profile is also recovered with a bias of < 4% at all atmospheric depths < 1200 g cm−2. We aim to apply this framework with pulses simulated from CoREAS with measured noise, ultimately extending the framework to realistic antenna layouts such as from LOFAR or SKA-Low.
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BibTeX
@misc{watanabe2026beyond,
title = {{Beyond $X_\mathrmmax$ : Reconstructing Air Shower Profiles with Information Field Theory with SKA-Low}},
author = {Keito Watanabe and Tim Huege and Torsten Enßlin and Vincent Eberle and Sjoerd Bouma and Justin Bray and Stijn Buitink and Arthur Corstanje and Vital De Henau and Edwin Dickinson and Tjibbe Gottmer and Brian Hare and Haoning He and Jörg Hörandel and Clancy James and Mrinal Jetti and Philipp Laub and Xingyu Li and Marten Lourens and Hermann-Josef Mathes and Katie Mulrey and Anna Nelles and Subhadip Saha and Felix Schlüter and Olaf Scholten and Ralph Spencer and Christopher Sterpka and Sander ter Veen and Karen Terveer and Gia Trinh and Paulina Turekova and Darko Veberič and Marc Waterson and Chao Zhang and Pengfei Zhang and Yi Zhang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.30887},
eprint = {2608.30887},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30887},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Beyond X_max : Reconstructing Air Shower Profiles with Information Field Theory with SKA-Low
AU - Keito Watanabe
AU - Tim Huege
AU - Torsten Enßlin
AU - Vincent Eberle
AU - Sjoerd Bouma
AU - Justin Bray
AU - Stijn Buitink
AU - Arthur Corstanje
AU - Vital De Henau
AU - Edwin Dickinson
AU - Tjibbe Gottmer
AU - Brian Hare
AU - Haoning He
AU - Jörg Hörandel
AU - Clancy James
AU - Mrinal Jetti
AU - Philipp Laub
AU - Xingyu Li
AU - Marten Lourens
AU - Hermann-Josef Mathes
AU - Katie Mulrey
AU - Anna Nelles
AU - Subhadip Saha
AU - Felix Schlüter
AU - Olaf Scholten
AU - Ralph Spencer
AU - Christopher Sterpka
AU - Sander ter Veen
AU - Karen Terveer
AU - Gia Trinh
AU - Paulina Turekova
AU - Darko Veberič
AU - Marc Waterson
AU - Chao Zhang
AU - Pengfei Zhang
AU - Yi Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.30887
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30887
AB - While radio measurements of extensive air showers have shown to achieve a high precision of X_max sensitivity, it has been shown that parameters beyond X_max can also be reconstructed. These shape parameters contain additional sensitivity to the hadronic physics in the shower as well as its mass composition. In this work, we showcase a reconstruction framework to recover the full longitudinal profile from realistic radio measurements. The framework is based on Information Field Theory that infers the full profile with a forward-based model, which uses a Gaisser-Hillas profile with weakly informative shower priors, SMIET with a template library to synthesise pulses at any event geometry, and a realistic antenna response and noise level emulating that of SKA-Low. We verify the self-consistency of our framework with ∼ 900 events generated with SMIET with antennas placed on the v⃗ × (v⃗ × B⃗) axis. The framework recovers the full profile within uncertainty and capture correlations between shower parameters. We yield an X_max resolution of < 9 g cm^−2 as well as resolutions of the width and asymmetry with minimal bias. The profile is also recovered with a bias of < 4% at all atmospheric depths < 1200 g cm^−2. We aim to apply this framework with pulses simulated from CoREAS with measured noise, ultimately extending the framework to realistic antenna layouts such as from LOFAR or SKA-Low.
ER -