On Radio Detection of Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos in Antarctic Ice

• Main Authors: Frichter, George M., Ralston, John P., McKay, Douglas W.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 1995
• Subjects: Astrophysics astro-ph; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology hep-ph; FOS Physical sciences; Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9507078; https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9507078

Interactions of ultrahigh energy neutrinos of cosmological origin in large volumes of dense, radio-transparent media can be detected via coherent Cherenkov emission from accompanying electromagnetic showers. Antarctic ice meets the requirements for an efficient detection medium for a radio frequency neutrino telescope. We carefully estimate the sensitivity of realistic antennas embedded deep in the ice to 100 MHz - 1 GHz signals generated by predicted neutrino fluxes from active galactic nuclei. Our main conclusion is that a {\it single radio receiver} can probe a $\sim 1$ ${\rm km}^3$ volume for events with primary energy near 2 PeV and that the total number of events registered would be roughly 200 to 400 ${\rm year}^{-1}$ in our most conservative estimate. An array of such receivers would increase sensitivity dramatically. A radio neutrino telescope could directly observe and test our understanding of the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe, simultaneously testing the standard theory of particle physics at unprecedented energies. : 45 pages, 21 figures, uuencoded, gzipped, submitted to Phys. Rev. D, also available at http://poincare.math.ukans.edu/~frichter/radio.html (Shading in Figure 21 fixed)