Discovering the highest energy neutrinos with the Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO)

• Main Authors: Vieregg, AG, Abarr, Q, Allison, P, Ammerman Yebra, J, Alvarez-Muñiz, J, Beatty, JJ, Besson, DZ, Chen, P, Chen, Y, Cheng, X, Clem, JM, Connolly, A, Cremonesi, L, Deaconu, C, Flaherty, J, Frikken, D, Gorham, PW, Hast, C, Hornhuber, C, Huang, JJ, Hughes, K, Hynous, A, Ku, Y, Kuo, CY, Liu, TC, Martin, Z, Miki, C, Nam, J, Nichol, RJ, Nishimura, K, Novikov, A, Nozdrina, A, Oberla, E, Prohira, S, Prechelt, R, Rauch, BF, Roberts, JM, Romero-Wolf, A, Russell, JW, Seckel, D, Shiao, J, Smith, D, Southall, D, Varner, GS, Wang, SH, Wang, YH, Wissel, SA, Young, R, Zas, E, Zeolla, A
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Proceedings of Science 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10162912/1/ICRC2021_1029.pdf; https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10162912/

The Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) is a NASA Long-Duration Balloon Mission that has been selected for concept development. PUEO has unprecedented sensitivity to ultra-high energy neutrinos above 1018 eV. PUEO will be sensitive to both Askaryan emission from neutrino-induced cascades in Antarctic ice and geomagnetic emission from upward-going air showers that are a result of tau neutrino interactions. PUEO is also especially well-suited for point source and transient searches. Compared to its predecessor ANITA, PUEO achieves better than an order-of-magnitude improvement in sensitivity and lowers the energy threshold for detection, by implementing a coherent phased array trigger, adding more channels, optimizing the detection bandwidth, and implementing real-time filtering. Here we discuss the science reach and plans for PUEO, leading up to a 2024 launch.