Prospects for high-elevation radio detection of >100 PeV tau neutrinos
- Creators
- Wissel, Stephanie
- Romero-Wolf, Andrés
- Schoorlemmer, Harm
- Carvalho, Washington R., Jr.
- Alvarez-Muñiz, Jaime
- Zas, Enrique
- Cummings, Austin
- Deaconu, Cosmin
- Hughes, Kaeli
- Ludwig, Andrew
- Morancy, Joalda
- Oberla, Eric
- Paciaroni, Caroline
- Prohira, Steven
- Southall, Dan
- Stapel-Kalat, Max
- Strutt, Ben
- Vasquez, Mercedes
- Vieregg, Abigail
Abstract
Tau neutrinos are expected to comprise roughly one third of both the astrophysical and cosmogenic neutrino flux, but currently the flavor ratio is poorly constrained and the expected flux at energies above 10¹⁷ eV is low. We present a detector concept aimed at measuring the diffuse flux of tau neutrinos in this energy range via a high-elevation mountaintop detector using the radio technique. The detector searches for radio signals from upgoing air showers generated by Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. Signals from several antennas in a compact array are coherently summed at the trigger level, permitting not only directional masking of anthropogenic backgrounds, but also a low trigger threshold. This design takes advantage of both the large viewing area available at high-elevation sites and the nearly full duty cycle available to radio instruments. We present trade studies that consider the station elevation, frequency band, number of antennas in the array, and the trigger threshold to develop a highly efficient station design. Such a mountaintop detector can achieve a factor of ten improvement in acceptance over existing instruments with 100 independent stations. With 1000 stations and three years of observation, it can achieve a sensitivity to an integrated Script ε⁻² flux of <10−9 GeV cm⁻² sr⁻¹ s⁻¹, in the range of the expected flux of all-flavor cosmogenic neutrinos assuming a pure iron cosmic-ray composition.
Additional Information
© 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab. Received 28 April 2020. Accepted 14 October 2020. Published 30 November 2020. We thank David Saltzberg for insightful and thoughtful conversations. S. W. thanks the National Science Foundation for support through CAREER Award #1752922. S. W., C. P., M. V., and M. S.-K. thank the Bill and Linda Frost Fund at the California Polytechnic State University for their support. Part of this work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. J. A-M. and E. Z. thank the financial support of Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (FPA 2017-85114-P), Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2017/07) and RENATA Red Nacional Temática de Astropartículas (FPA2015-68783-REDT). This work is supported by the María de Maeztu Units of Excellence program MDM-2016-0692 and the Spanish Research State Agency. This work is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER program). W. C. thanks grant #2015/15735-1, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). The UChicago group thanks the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Sloan Foundation, as well as NSF Award #1607555 and NASA Award #80NSSC18K0231. K. H. thanks the NSF for support through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award DGE-1746045. We gratefully acknowledge support from the NSF-funded White Mountain Research Station and especially the expertise and support provided by from Jeremiah Eames and Steven Devanzo.Attached Files
Submitted - 2004.12718.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 108045
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210212-133816528
- PHY-1752922
- NSF
- California Polytechnic State University
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- FPA 2017-85114-P
- Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
- ED431C 2017/07
- Xunta de Galicia
- FPA2015-68783-REDT
- Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
- MDM-2016-0692
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU)
- Agencia Estatal de Investigación
- European Regional Development Fund
- Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)
- 2015/15735-1
- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP)
- Research Corporation
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- PHY-1607555
- NSF
- 80NSSC18K0231
- NASA
- DGE-1746045
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Created
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2021-02-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-07-12Created from EPrint's last_modified field