Role of surface topography in anomalous reflected-pulse polarity

Determine whether surface topography, local slopes, or related lateral surface structure can produce the non-inverted reflected pulses observed in the ANITA anomalous-polarity events.

Background

The forward model constrains shallow subsurface layering under the assumption of a laterally uniform stack and does not incorporate a full treatment of surface topography or local-slope structure.

The paper notes that earlier work found that local surface structure can produce non-inverted reflected pulses for some geometries. Consequently, excluding realistic shallow firn layering does not settle whether surface geometry explains the anomalous events.