30TH INTERNATIONAL COSMIC RAY CONFERENCE ANITA: First Flight Overview and Detector Performance

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice cap
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.549.2097; http://galprop.stanford.edu/elibrary/icrc/2007/preliminary/pdf/icrc1095.pdf

Abstract: The ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) searches for ultra high energy neutrinos interacting in the Antarctic ice cap. It is a long duration balloon experiment composed of an array of broadband dual-polarized horn antennas that had its first science flight over Antarctica in December 2006 through January 2007. ANITA relies upon the Askaryan effect, in which a particle shower in a dense medium emits coherent Cherenkov radiation at radio wavelengths, for the detection of a neutrino induced shower. ANITA is designed to detect — or constrain flux models of — ultra high energy neutrinos created by the interaction of ultra high energy cosmic rays with the cosmic microwave background. In this paper we discuss the detector performance during the first ANITA flight.