HiCal 2: An instrument designed for calibration of the ANITA experiment and for Antarctic surface reflectivity measurements

• Published in: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
• Main Authors: Prohira, S., Novikov, A., Besson, D. Z., Ratzlaff, K., Stockham, J., Stockham, M., Clem, J. M., Young, R., Gorham, P. W., Allison, P., Banerjee, O., Batten, L., Beatty, J. J., Belov, K., Binns, W. R., Bugaev, V., Cao, P., Chen, C., Chen, P., Connolly, A., Cremonesi, L., Dailey, B., Deaconu, C., Dowkontt, P. F., Fox, B. D., Gordon, J., Hast, C., Hill, B., Hupe, R., Israel, M. H., Kowalski, J., Lam, J., Learned, J. G., Liewer, K. M., Liu, T. C., Ludwig, A., Matsuno, S., Miki, C., Mottram, M., Mulrey, K., Nam, J., Nichol, R. J., Oberla, E., Rauch, B. F., Roberts, J., Romero-Wolf, A., Rotter, B., Russell, J., Saltzberg, D., Schoorlemmer, H., Seckel, D., Stafford, S., Strutt, B., Tatem, K., Varner, G. S., Vieregg, A. G., Wissel, S. A., Wu, F.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: 46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1502995; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1502995; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2018.11.092

The NASA supported High-Altitude Calibration (HiCal)-2 instrument flew as a companion balloon to the ANITA-4 experiment in December 2016. Based on a high-voltage (HV) discharge pulser producing radio-frequency (RF) calibration pulses, HiCal-2 comprised two payloads, which flew for a combined 18 days, covering 1.5 revolutions of the Antarctic continent. ANITA-4 captured over 10,000 pulses from HiCal-2, both direct and reflected from the surface, at distances varying from 100–700 km, providing a large dataset for surface reflectivity measurements. In view of this, we present details on the design, construction and performance of HiCal-2.