Design and Initial Performance of the Prototype for the BEACON Instrument for Detection of Ultrahigh Energy Particles

Abstract

The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is a planned neutrino telescope designed to detect radio emission from upgoing air showers generated by ultrahigh energy tau neutrino interactions in the Earth. This detection mechanism provides a measurement of the tau flux of cosmic neutrinos. We have installed an 8-channel prototype instrument at high elevation at Barcroft Field Station, which has been running since 2018, and consists of 4 dual-polarized antennas sensitive between 30-80 MHz, whose signals are filtered, amplified, digitized, and saved to disk using a custom data acquisition system (DAQ). The BEACON prototype is at high elevation to maximize effective volume and uses a directional beamforming trigger to improve rejection of anthropogenic background noise at the trigger level. Here we discuss the design, construction, and calibration of the BEACON prototype instrument. We also discuss the radio frequency environment observed by the instrument, and categorize the types of events seen by the instrument, including a likely cosmic ray candidate event.

21 pages, 20 figures

References in corpus (14)

• The Cosmic Ray Energy Spectrum Observed with the Surface Detector of the Telescope Array Experiment
• Measurement of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum above $2.5\times 10^{18}$ eV using the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Radio detection of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers and High-Energy Neutrinos
• Measurement of the Flux of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays by the Stereo Technique
• Flavor Ratios of Astrophysical Neutrinos: Implications for Precision Measurements
• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays: The Intersection of the Cosmic and Energy Frontiers
• A Comprehensive Approach to Tau-Lepton Production by High-Energy Tau Neutrinos Propagating Through Earth
• Inferring the flavor of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos at their sources
• Towards Determination of the Initial Flavor Composition of Ultrahigh-energy Neutrino Fluxes with Neutrino Telescopes
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery
• Detector Requirements for Model-Independent Measurements of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Cross Sections
• Analysis of a Tau Neutrino Origin for the Near-Horizon Air Shower Events Observed by the Fourth Flight of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)
• LOPES-3D, an antenna array for full signal detection of air-shower radio emission

Cited by in corpus (12)

• TAROGE-M: Radio Antenna Array on Antarctic High Mountain for Detecting Near-Horizontal Ultra-High Energy Air Showers
• Probing superheavy dark matter through lunar radio observations of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos and the impacts of neutrino cascades
• Simulation of radio signals from cosmic-ray cascades in air and ice as observed by in-ice Askaryan radio detectors
• Ultrahigh-energy neutrino searches using next-generation gravitational wave detectors at radio neutrino detectors: GRAND, IceCube-Gen2 Radio, and RNO-G
• Analytical planar wavefront reconstruction and error estimates for radio detection of extensive air showers
• Particle content of very inclined air showers for radio signal modeling
• Radio Emission from Atmosphere-Skimming Cosmic Ray Showers in High-Altitude Balloon-Borne Experiments
• Characterization of Atmosphere-Skimming Cosmic-Ray Showers in High-Altitude Experiments
• Sensitivity of BEACON to Ultra-High Energy Diffuse and Transient Neutrinos
• Observational strategies for ultrahigh-energy neutrinos: the importance of deep sensitivity for detection and astronomy
• Towards the Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): the GRANDProto300 and GRAND@Auger prototypes
• Validation of straight-line signal propagation for radio signal of very inclined cosmic ray air showers