The Pierre Auger Observatory is exploring the potential of the radio
detection technique to study extensive air showers induced by ultra-high energy
cosmic rays. The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) addresses both
technological and scientific aspects of the radio technique. A first phase of
AERA has been operating since September 2010 with detector stations observing
radio signals at frequencies between 30 and 80 MHz. In this paper we present
comparative studies to identify and optimize the antenna design for the final
configuration of AERA consisting of 160 individual radio detector stations. The
transient nature of the air shower signal requires a detailed description of
the antenna sensor. As the ultra-wideband reception of pulses is not widely
discussed in antenna literature, we review the relevant antenna characteristics
and enhance theoretical considerations towards the impulse response of antennas
including polarization effects and multiple signal reflections. On the basis of
the vector effective length we study the transient response characteristics of
three candidate antennas in the time domain. Observing the variation of the
continuous galactic background intensity we rank the antennas with respect to
the noise level added to the galactic signal.
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