Frequency spectrum of Cherenkov radiation and radioastronomical method for measuring the flux of ultrahigh-energy cosmic particles

The frequency spectrum of a radio pulse generated by a cascade shower in the Moon’s regolith has been calculated with the inclusion of the transverse sizes of the shower and the inhomogeneous distribution of excess electrons over the disc radius. The character of the spectrum differs significantly from the previous results that were obtained by E. Zas et al., Phys. Rev. D 45, 362 (1992), and J. Alvarez-Muñis et al., astro-ph/0003315, and were more recently used by T. H. Hankins et al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 283, 1027 (1996); P. W. Gorham et al., astro-ph/9906504; and P. W. Gorham et al., astro-ph/0310232. The maximum-intensity region lies in a range of 500–600 MHz. In a frequency range of 1.5–2 GHz, the radiation intensity decreases by several orders of magnitude. This seems to be one of the causes of the absence of events in experimental works of T. H. Hankins et al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 283, 1027 (1996); P. W. Gorham et al., astro-ph/9906504; and P. W. Gorham et al., astro-ph/0310232, which closed Z-burst models.