2020/04/30 by Stephanie Wissel, Andrés Romero-Wolf, A. Romero‐Wolf +25 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Aerospace engineering #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmic ray #Detector #Duty cycle #Elevation (ballistics) #Flux (metallurgy) #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino detector #Neutrino oscillation #Nuclear physics #Optics #Physics #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Range (aeronautics) #Voltage #astro-ph.HE #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2020/11/065
26 pages, 11 figures
arxiv created 2020/10/13 · openalex publication_date 2020/11/30 · arxiv updated 2020/12/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 10 17 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 −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.