- First Name:Amy
- Last Name:Connolly
- Working Group Presenter
- Title:Closing in on Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos with the
- Presentation Type:Talk
- Presentation Work Group:Neutrino Astronomy
- Abstract:Radio Cherenkov experiments are closing in on neutrinos in the ultra-high energy regime. The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) is a balloon experiment that aims to detect neutrinos with energies above 10^18 eV (1 EeV) for the first time by detecting the radio Cherenkov signal produced by neutrino interactions in the Antarctic ice. Neutrinos in this energy regime are expected to be produced in the interaction of cosmic rays with the cosmic microwave background. ANITA will fly at the end of this year, during the 2006-2007 Austral summer. I will present results from the ANITA-lite test flight, and discuss the status of preparations for the upcoming flight. In addition, I will describe two next-generation radio detection experiments under development, one in a salt formation and another on the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf, that are designed to move beyond the discovery stage and measure a sample of ultra-high energy neutrinos that is large enough to study their properties. I will also discuss recent developments in simulating these experiments, including the effect of ice surface roughness on ANITA’s sensitivity and modelling signal and noise in the time domain.