An improved trigger for Askaryan radio detectors

Abstract

High-energy neutrinos with energies above a few $10^{16}$eV can be measured efficiently with in-ice radio detectors which complement optical detectors such as IceCube at higher energies. Several pilot arrays explore the radio technology successfully in Antarctica. Because of the low flux and interaction cross-section of neutrinos it is vital to increase the sensitivity of the radio detector as much as possible. In this manuscript, different approaches to trigger on high-energy neutrinos are systematically studied and optimized. We find that the sensitivity can be improved substantially (by more than 50% between $10^{17}$eV and $10^{18}$eV) by simply restricting the bandwidth in the trigger to frequencies between 80 MHz and 200 MHz instead of the currently used 80 MHz to ~1 GHz bandwidth. We also compare different trigger schemes that are currently being used (a simple amplitude threshold, a high/low threshold trigger and a power-integration trigger) and find that the scheme that performs best depends on the dispersion of the detector. These findings inform the detector design of future Askaryan detectors and can be used to increase the sensitivity to high-energy neutrinos significantly without any additional costs. The findings also apply to the phased array trigger concept.

arXiv commentReplaced with published version

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Deep-learning-based reconstruction of the neutrino direction and energy for in-ice radio detectors
• Improving sensitivity of the ARIANNA detector by rejecting thermal noise with deep learning
• Measuring the Polarization Reconstruction Resolution of the ARIANNA Neutrino Detector with Cosmic Rays
• In-ice Askaryan Emission from Air Showers: Implications for Radio Neutrino Detectors