Cosmic-Ray Physics in the PeV to EeV Energy Range with the IceCube-Gen2 Surface Array

IceCube-Gen2 is a proposed neutrino observatory at the South Pole that will build on the success of IceCube and will also serve as a unique detector for cosmic-ray air showers.
Analogous to the IceTop surface array over IceCube’s deep optical detector, IceCube-Gen2 will also feature a surface array above the optical array deep in the ice.
As improvement over IceTop, the IceCube-Gen2 surface array will be comprised of elevated detectors to avoid snow coverage, and will combine two types of detectors: scintillation panels that measure air-shower particles on ground and enable a low detection threshold, which is important to serve as a veto for selecting downgoing neutrino candidates, and radio antennas which increase the measurement accuracy for air showers by providing a calorimetric measurement of the electromagnetic shower component and its depth of maximum, X$_{max}$.
As another major advantage, the eight times larger surface area combined with a larger field of view will provide a 30-fold increase for the aperture of surface-deep coincident events.
With these improvements in statistics and measurement accuracy, IceCube-Gen2 will thus make unique contributions to the particle physics and astrophysics of Galactic cosmic rays in the PeV to EeV energy range, including the search for PeV photon sources.
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This proceeding summarizes the technical design and science case enabled by the IceCube-Gen2 Surface Array.