Proposed experiment to detect air showers with the Jicamarca radar system

When an extremely high energy particle interacts in the atmosphere, the collision induces a multiplicative cascade of charged particles, which grows exponentially until the energy per secondary degrades enough to dissipate in ionization of the surrounding air. During this process the compact cloud of energetic secondary particles travels 10–20 km through the atmosphere, leaving a column of ionization behind it. This ionized column quickly recombines, but for a period of order 0.1 ms it is highly reflective at frequencies below 100 MHz. This ionization trail, which is comparable in ionization density to that of a micro-meteor, should be clearly detectable using standard radar methods. We propose radar measurements using the facilities operated by Cornell University and the Instituto Geofisico del Peru (IGP) at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory near Lima, Peru. This facility’s primary instrument is 49.92 MHz incoherent scatter radar, transmitting up to 1.5 MW of pulse power.