The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays: Pathfinder Experiment for a Next-Generation Neutrino Observatory

• Main Authors: Prohira, S., de Vries, K. D., Allison, P., Beatty, J., Besson, D., Connolly, A., Dasgupta, P., Deaconu, C., De Kockere, S., Frikken, D., Hast, C., Santiago, E. Huesca, Kuo, C. -Y., Latif, U. A., Lukic, V., Meures, T., Mulrey, K., Nam, J., Nozdrina, A., Oberla, E., Ralston, J. P., Sbrocco, C., Stanley, R. S., Torres, J., Toscano, S., Broeck, D. Van den, van Eijndhoven, N., Wissel, S.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2021
• Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM; High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena astro-ph.HE; High Energy Physics - Experiment hep-ex; FOS Physical sciences; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2104.00459; https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.00459

The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays (RET-CR) is a recently initiated experiment designed to detect the englacial cascade of a cosmic-ray initiated air shower via in-ice radar, toward the goal of a full-scale, next-generation experiment to detect ultra high energy neutrinos in polar ice. For cosmic rays with a primary energy greater than 10 PeV, roughly 10% of an air-shower's energy reaches the surface of a high elevation ice-sheet ($\gtrsim$2 km) concentrated into a radius of roughly 10 cm. This penetrating shower core creates an in-ice cascade many orders of magnitude more dense than the preceding in-air cascade. This dense cascade can be detected via the radar echo technique, where transmitted radio is reflected from the ionization deposit left in the wake of the cascade. RET-CR will test the radar echo method in nature, with the in-ice cascade of a cosmic-ray initiated air-shower serving as a test beam. We present the projected event rate and sensitivity based upon a three part simulation using CORSIKA, GEANT4, and RadioScatter. RET-CR expects $\sim$1 radar echo event per day.