Development of a low-power, low-cost front end electronics module for large scale distributed neutrino detectors

• Main Author: James J. Beatty Richard D. Kass
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: 47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION; 72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; ANTARCTICA; ANTENNAS; BOREHOLES; COMMUNICATIONS; DESIGN; DIMENSIONS; FABRICATION; FREQUENCY RANGE; GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM; IMPEDANCE; IRIDIUM; MARKET; NEUTRINOS; PERFORMANCE; POWER TRANSMISSION LINES; SATELLITES; SPACE-TIME; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Ross Ice Shelf; South Pole; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Shelf; South pole
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/948830; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/948830; https://doi.org/10.2172/948830

A number of concepts have been presented for distributed neutrino detectors formed of large numbers of autonomous detectors. Examples include the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf Antenna Neutrino Array (ARIANNA) [Barwick 2006], as well as proposed radio extensions to the IceCube detector at South Pole Station such as AURA and IceRay. [Besson 2008]. We have focused on key enabling technical developments required by this class of experiments. The radio Cherenkov signal, generated by the Askaryan mechanism [Askaryan 1962, 1965], is impulsive and coherent up to above 1 GHz. In the frequency domain, the impulsive character of the emission results in simultaneous increase of the power detected in multiple frequency bands. This multiband triggering approach has proven fruitful, especially as anthropogenic interference often results from narrowband communications signals. A typical distributed experiment of this type consists of a station responsible for the readout of a cluster of antennas either near the surface of the ice or deployed in boreholes. Each antenna is instrumented with a broadband low-noise amplifier, followed by an array of filters to facilitate multi-band coincidence trigger schemes at the antenna level. The power in each band is detected at the output of each band filter, using either square-law diode detectors or log-power detectors developed for the cellular telephone market. The use of multiple antennas per station allows a local coincidence among antennas to be used as the next stage of the trigger. Station triggers can then be combined into an array trigger by comparing timestamps of triggers among stations and identifying space-time clusters of station triggers. Data from each station is buffered and can be requested from the individual stations when a multi-station coincidence occurs. This approach has been successfully used in distributed experiments such as the Pierre Auger Observatory. [Abraham et al. 2004] We identified the filters as being especially critical. The frequency range of interest, ...