Cosmic Rays and the Askaryan Effect Reveal Subsurface Structure and Buried Ice on the Moon
Abstract
We present the first full-wavelength numerical simulations of the electric field generated by cosmic ray impacts into the Moon. Billions of cosmic rays fall onto the Moon every year. Ultra-high energy cosmic ray impacts produce secondary particle cascades within the regolith and subsequent coherent, widebandwidth, linearly-polarized radio pulses by the Askaryan Effect. Observations of the cosmic ray particle shower radio emissions can reveal subsurface structure on the Moon and enable the broad and deep prospecting necessary to confirm or refute the existence of polar ice deposits. Our simulations show that the radio emissions and reflections could reveal ice layers as thin as 10 cm and buried under regolith as deep as 9 m. The Askaryan Effect presents a novel and untapped opportunity for characterizing buried lunar ice at unprecedented depths and spatial scales.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2503.04965,
title = {Cosmic Rays and the Askaryan Effect Reveal Subsurface Structure and Buried Ice on the Moon},
author = {E. S. Costello and R. R. Ghent and A. Romero-Wolf and P. W. Gorham and P. G. Lucey and C. J. Tai Udovicic and P. Linton and A. Ludwig and K. McBride and C. Miki and E. Oberla and J. Rolla and A. Jung},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.04965},
year = {2025}
}