Speaker
Description
The Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) experiment is a long-duration balloon-borne experiment that launched in December 2025 from McMurdo Station in Antarctica. PUEO builds upon the designs of the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiments in order to detect ultrahigh energy (> 1EeV) neutrinos via their radio frequency emission produced by in-ice interactions. The main instrument for PUEO has 96 dual-polarized, quad-ridged horn antennas, allowing for 192 channels of both horizontally and vertically polarized signal combined. In addition, PUEO deployed sinuous antennas for sensitivity to a 50-500 MHz range. Upon detection by PUEO's antennas, radio frequencies pass through a series of analog amplifications and filtering at the front-end in order to isolate the signal and reduce background noise. The signal then enters the Data Acquisition (DAQ) system, which is responsible for performing real-time delay-and-sum beamforming to form the trigger. This poster will present the design of the PUEO experiment.