A new calculation of Earth-skimming very- and ultra-high energy tau neutrinos

Abstract

Cosmic neutrinos above a PeV are produced either within astrophysical sources or when ultra-high energy cosmic rays interact in transit through the cosmic background radiation. Detection of these neutrinos will be essential for understanding cosmic ray acceleration, composition and source evolution. By using the Earth as a tau neutrino converter for upward-going extensive air showers from tau decays, balloon-borne and space-based instruments can take advantage of a large volume and mass of the terrestrial neutrino target. The theoretical inputs and uncertainties in determining the tau lepton exit probabilities and their translation to detection acceptance will be discussed in the context of a new calculation we have performed. We quantify the experimental detection capability based on our calculation, including using the Probe of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) concept study response parameters for optical air Cherenkov detection. These case studies are used to illustrate the features and uncertainties in upward tau air shower detection.

arXiv comment8 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 36th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2019), held July 24th - August 1st, 2019 in Madison, WI, USA

References in corpus (14)

• The Astrophysics of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and Design
• Cosmogenic Neutrinos: parameter space and detectabilty from PeV to ZeV
• Differential limit on the extremely-high-energy cosmic neutrino flux in the presence of astrophysical background from nine years of IceCube data
• A First Search for Cosmogenic Neutrinos with the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array
• High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Short Gamma-Ray Bursts: Prospects for Coincident Detection with Gravitational Waves
• High Energy Neutrinos from the Tidal Disruption of Stars
• Connection of the virtual ${\gamma }^{\ast }p$ cross section of $ep$ deep inelastic scattering to real $\gamma p$ scattering, and the implications for $\nu N$ and $ep$ total cross sections
• Search for Point-Like Sources of Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory and Improved Limit on the Diffuse Flux of Tau Neutrinos
• POEMMA's Target of Opportunity Sensitivity to Cosmic Neutrino Transient Sources
• Studies of an air-shower imaging system for the detection of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos
• Cosmic tau neutrino detection via Cherenkov signals from air showers from Earth-emerging taus
• On the prospects of ultra-high energy cosmic rays detection by high altitude antennas
• The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Present and Perspectives