A first search for cosmogenic neutrinos with the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. The ARIANNA experiment seeks to observe the diffuse flux of neutrinos in the 10 8 -10 10 GeV energy range using a grid of radio detectors at the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica. The detector measures the coherent Cherenkov radiation produced at radio frequencies, fro...
Published in: | Astroparticle Physics |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
eScholarship, University of California
2015
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9vv3g5kx |
Summary: | © 2015 Elsevier B.V. The ARIANNA experiment seeks to observe the diffuse flux of neutrinos in the 10 8 -10 10 GeV energy range using a grid of radio detectors at the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica. The detector measures the coherent Cherenkov radiation produced at radio frequencies, from about 100 MHz-1 GHz, by charged particle showers generated by neutrino interactions in the ice. The ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array (HRA) is being constructed as a prototype for the full array. During the 2013-14 austral summer, three HRA stations collected radio data which was wirelessly transmitted off site in nearly real-time. The performance of these stations is described and a simple analysis to search for neutrino signals is presented. The analysis employs a set of three cuts that reject background triggers while preserving 90% of simulated cosmogenic neutrino triggers. No neutrino candidates are found in the data and a model-independent 90% confidence level Neyman upper limit is placed on the all flavor ν+ν¯ flux in a sliding decade-wide energy bin. The limit reaches a minimum of 1.9×10 -23 GeV- 1 cm- 2 s- 1 sr- 1 in the 10 8.5 -10 9.5 GeV energy bin. Simulations of the performance of the full detector are also described. The sensitivity of the full ARIANNA experiment is presented and compared with current neutrino flux models. |
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