A Technique for Detection of PeV Neutrinos Using a Phased Radio Array

Abstract

The detection of high energy neutrinos ($10^{15}-10^{20}$ eV or $1-10^5$ PeV) is an important step toward understanding the most energetic cosmic accelerators and would enable tests of fundamental physics at energy scales that cannot easily be achieved on Earth. In this energy range, there are two expected populations of neutrinos: the astrophysical flux observed with IceCube at lower energies ($\sim 1$ PeV) and the predicted cosmogenic flux at higher energies ($\sim 10^{18}$ eV). Radio detector arrays such as RICE, ANITA, ARA, and ARIANNA exploit the Askaryan effect and the radio transparency of glacial ice, which together enable enormous volumes of ice to be monitored with sparse instrumentation. We describe here the design for a phased radio array that would lower the energy threshold of radio techniques to the PeV scale, allowing measurement of the astrophysical flux observed with IceCube over an extended energy range. Meaningful energy overlap with optical Cherenkov telescopes could be used for energy calibration. The phased radio array design would also provide more efficient coverage of the large effective volume required to discover cosmogenic neutrinos.

21 pages, 10 figures

Cited by in corpus (12)

• IceCube-Gen2: The Window to the Extreme Universe
• Design and Performance of an Interferometric Trigger Array for Radio Detection of High-Energy Neutrinos
• Measurements and Modeling of Near-Surface Radio Propagation in Glacial Ice and Implications for Neutrino Experiments
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Prospects for High-Elevation Radio Detection of >100 PeV Tau Neutrinos
• Ultra-High-Energy Tau Neutrino Cross Sections with GRAND and POEMMA
• Design and Initial Performance of the Prototype for the BEACON Instrument for Detection of Ultrahigh Energy Particles
• A low-threshold ultrahigh-energy neutrino search with the Askaryan Radio Array
• Development Toward a Ground-Based Interferometric Phased Array for Radio Detection of High Energy Neutrinos
• Long-baseline horizontal radio-frequency transmission through polar ice
• Broadband RF Phased Array Design with MEEP: Comparisons to Array Theory in Two and Three Dimensions
• Constraints on the Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Flux from Gamma-Ray Bursts from a Prototype Station of the Askaryan Radio Array