PoS(ICRC2021)415 ONLINE ICRC 2021 THE ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS CONFERENCE Berlin | Germany 37 th International Cosmic Ray Conference 12–23 July 2021 Performance of SKA as an air shower observatory S. Buitink, 1, 2, * A. Corstanje, 1, 2 H. Falcke, 2, 3, 4 B. M. Hare, 5 J. R. Hörandel, 1, 2, 3 T. Huege, 1, 6 C. W. James, 7 G. K. Krampah, 1 K. Mulrey, 1 P. Mitra, 1 A. Nelles, 8, 9 H. Pandya, 1 J. P. Rachen, 1 O. Scholten, 10 S. ter Veen, 2, 4 S. Thoudam, 11 T. N. G. Trinh 12 and T. Winchen 13 1 Astrophysical Institute, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium 2 Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands 3 Nikhef, Science Park 105, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands 4 Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), Postbus 2, 7990 AA Dwingeloo, The Netherlands 5 University of Groningen, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Groningen, 9747 AD, Netherlands 6 Institute for Astroparticle Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), P.O. Box 3640, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany 7 Curtin University, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia 8 DESY, Platanenallee 6, 15738 Zeuthen, Germany 9 ECAP, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany 10 Interuniversity Institute for High-Energy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium 11 Department of Physics, Khalifa University, PO Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 12 Department of Physics, School of Education, Can Tho University Campus II, 3/2 Street, Ninh Kieu District, Can Tho City, Vietnam 13 Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn E-mail: stijn.buitink@vub.be The low frequency segment of SKA in Australia will have an extremely dense antenna array spanning an area of roughly 0.5 km 2 . It offers unique possibilities for high-resolution observations of air showers. Compared to LOFAR, it will have a much more homogeneous ground coverage, an increased frequency bandwidth (50–350 MHz), and the possibility to continuously observe with nearly 100% duty cycle. SKA will observe air showers in the range 10 16 eV – 10 18 eV with a reconstruction resolution on X max of around 10 g/cm 2 . This allows for a high-precision study of mass composition in the energy regime where a transition is expected from Galactic to extragalactic origin. In addition, SKA will be able to put constraints on hadronic interaction models, which is crucial for interpreting the data in this complex energy range. In this talk, we will show the results of a full detector simulation and demonstrate the capabilities of SKA, including energy and X max reconstruction, as well as more advanced methods to constrain the shape of the longitudinal development of air showers. 37 th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2021) July 12th – 23rd, 2021 Online – Berlin, Germany * Presenter © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). https://pos.sissa.it/