Calibration and Physics with ARA Station 1: A Unique Askaryan Radio Array Detector ...

• Main Authors: Seikh, M. F. H, Besson, D. Z., Ali, S., Allison, P., Archambault, S., Beatty, J. J., Bishop, A., Chen, P., Chen, Y. C., Clark, B. A., Clay, W., Connolly, A., Couberly, K., Cremonesi, L., Cummings, A., Dasgupta, P., Debolt, R., De Kockere, S., de Vries, K. D., Deaconu, C., DuVernois, M. A., Flaherty, J., Friedman, E., Gaior, R., Giri, P., Hanson, J., Harty, N., Hendricks, B., Hoffman, K. D., Huang, J. J., Huang, M. H. A., Hughes, K., Ishihara, A., Karle, A., Kelley, J. L., Kim, K. C., Kim, M. C., Kravchenko, I., Krebs, R., Kuo, C. Y., Kurusu, K., Latif, U. A., Liu, C. H., Liu, T. C., Luszczak, W., Mase, K., Muzio, M. S., Nam, J., Nichol, R. J., Novikov, A.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2023
• Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM; High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena astro-ph.HE; Instrumentation and Detectors physics.ins-det; FOS Physical sciences; Antarctic; South Pole; Antarc*; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2308.07292; https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.07292

The Askaryan Radio Array Station 1 (A1), the first among five autonomous stations deployed for the ARA experiment at the South Pole, is a unique ultra-high energy neutrino (UHEN) detector based on the Askaryan effect that uses Antarctic ice as the detector medium. Its 16 radio antennas (distributed across 4 strings, each with 2 Vertically Polarized (VPol), 2 Horizontally Polarized (HPol) receivers), and 2 strings of transmitting antennas (calibration pulsers, CPs), each with 1 VPol and 1 HPol channel, are deployed at depths less than 100 m within the shallow firn zone of the 2.8 km thick South Pole (SP) ice. We apply different methods to calibrate its Ice Ray Sampler second generation (IRS2) chip for timing offset and ADC-to-Voltage conversion factors using a known continuous wave input signal to the digitizer, and achieve a precision of sub-nanoseconds. We achieve better calibration for odd, compared to even samples, and also find that the HPols under-perform relative to the VPol channels. Our timing ... : 10 pages ...