Radio emission from cosmic ray air showers: simulation results and parametrization

We have developed a sophisticated model of the radio emission from extensive air showers in the scheme of coherent geosynchrotron radiation, providing a theoretical foundation for the interpretation of experimental data from current and future experiments. Having verified the model through comparison of analytic calculations, Monte Carlo simulations and historical experimental data, we now present the results of extensive simulations performed with our Monte Carlo code. Important results are the absence of significant asymmetries in the total field strength emission pattern, the spectral dependence of the radiation, the polarization characteristics of the emission (allowing an unambiguous test of the geomagnetic emission mechanism), and the dependence of the radio emission on important air shower and observer parameters such as the shower zenith angle, the primary particle energy, the depth of the shower maximum and the observer position. An analytic parametrization incorporating the aforementioned dependences summarizes our results in a particularly useful way.