Comparison of optical, radio, and acoustical detectors for ultrahigh-energy neutrinos

• Main Author: Price, P B
• Language: English
• Published: 1997
• Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://cds.cern.ch/record/299009

For electromagnetic cascades induced by electron-neutrinos in South Pole ice, the effective volume per detector element (phototube, radio antenna, or acoustic transducer) as a function of cascade energy is estimated, taking absorption and scattering into account. A comparison of the three techniques shows that the optical technique is most effective for energies below ~0.5 PeV, that the radio technique shows promise of being the most effective for higher energies, and that the acoustic method is not competitive. Due to the great transparency of ice, the event rate of AGN ne-induced cascades is an order of magnitude greater than in water. For hard source spectra, the rate of Glashow resonance events may be much greater than the rate for non-resonant energies. The radio technique will be particularly useful in the study of Glashow events and in studies of sources with very hard energy spectra.