The sensitivity of past and near-future lunar radio experiments to ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos

Abstract

Various experiments have been conducted to search for the radio emission from ultra-high-energy particles interacting in the lunar regolith. Although they have not yielded any detections, they have been successful in establishing upper limits on the flux of these particles. I present a review of these experiments in which I re-evaluate their sensitivity to radio pulses, accounting for effects which were neglected in the original reports, and compare them with prospective near-future experiments. In several cases, I find that past experiments were substantially less sensitive than previously believed. I apply existing analytic models to determine the resulting limits on the fluxes of ultra-high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays. In the latter case, I amend the model to accurately reflect the fraction of the primary particle energy which manifests in the resulting particle cascade, resulting in a substantial improvement in the estimated sensitivity to cosmic rays. Although these models are in need of further refinement, in particular to incorporate the effects of small-scale lunar surface roughness, their application here indicates that a proposed experiment with the LOFAR telescope would test predictions of the neutrino flux from exotic-physics models, and an experiment with a phased-array feed on a large single-dish telescope such as the Parkes radio telescope would allow the first detection of cosmic rays with this technique, with an expected rate of one detection per 140 hours.

26 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics

References in corpus (12)

• Hot Gaseous Coronae around Spiral Galaxies: Probing the Illustris Simulation
• The AuScope Geodetic VLBI Array
• The sensitivity of the next generation of lunar Cherenkov observations to UHE neutrinos and cosmic rays
• Time-Domain Measurement of Broadband Coherent Cherenkov Radiation
• Limit on UHE Neutrino Flux from the Parkes Lunar Radio Cherenkov Experiment
• A new limit on the Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic-Ray flux with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope
• Cosmic Strings as Emitters of Extremely High Energy Neutrinos
• A lunar radio experiment with the Parkes radio telescope for the LUNASKA project
• The Directional Dependence of Apertures, Limits and Sensitivity of the Lunar Cherenkov Technique to a UHE Neutrino Flux
• A limit on the ultra-high-energy neutrino flux from lunar observations with the Parkes radio telescope
• Noise statistics in a fast digital radio receiver: the Bedlam backend for the Parkes Radio Telescope
• Expected properties of radio pulses from lunar EeV neutrino showers

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Radio detection of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers and High-Energy Neutrinos
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Askaryan radiation from neutrino-induced showers in ice
• Overview of lunar detection of ultra-high energy particles and new plans for the SKA
• Minimal prospects for radio detection of extensive air showers in the atmosphere of Jupiter
• Prospects of Probing the Radio Emission of Lunar UHECRv Events
• Discussion about a Standard Definition of the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for Radio Signals of ultra-high-energy Particles (ARENA2022)
• Sensitivity of lunar particle-detection experiments
• Air Shower Detection by Arrays of Radio Antennas (ISVHECRI 2018)
• Status of the Lunar Detection Mode for Cosmic Particles of LOFAR
• Status of air-shower measurements with sparse radio arrays (ARENA 2016)