Measuring cosmic ray radio signals at the Pierre Auger Observatory

The recent results of the LOPES and CODALEMA experiments open the door to a renewal of the radio technique for cosmic ray induced shower measurements. The demonstration has been done of its potential and performances at energies below 1018 eV, this upper limit being due to the small scale of the current experiments. A natural stage toward the improvement of the method is thus to install radio detectors in association with a large cosmic ray detector such as Auger. Besides surface and fluorescence detection, radio detection could be an alternative method, providing a complementary information. The Pierre Auger Collaboration has thus engaged a R&D effort which will lead to the installation of a radio engineering array covering 20 km2 on its southern site. Outline of the technique, results of the first phase of the tests and current plans for the future engineering array will be presented.