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The Radar Echo Telescope: A next-generation PeV and EeV neutrino detector
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Europe/London
Description
Since its completion in 2010, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has opened the gateway to high-energy neutrino astronomy, with the confirmation of an extra-galactic neutrino flux in 2013 and, most recently, the first view of our own galaxy in neutrinos. Neutrino astronomy is an important part of the multimessenger astronomy puzzle, giving a unique insight into the complex energetic processes occurring in astrophysical events. Finding coincident observations from neutrino, cosmic ray, electromagnetic, and gravitational wave telescopes will open up the range of galactic and extra-galactic phenomena that can be observed. The neutrino spectrum is expected to extend several orders of magnitude beyond the highest energy PeV neutrinos that have been detected to date. To push observations to higher energies and increase the number of neutrinos detected, increasingly large volumes of air, ice, and water must be instrumented in order to increase the number of neutrinos observed and push observations to even higher energies. Several next-generation instruments have already been proposed, which aim to build on previous success to instrument the volumes required to detect PeV and EeV neutrinos. A common issue encountered by these experiments is the high cost in both time and money in instrumenting such large volumes. As such, finding new ways to sparsely instrument increasing volumes of material is advantageous.
The Radar Echo Telescope (RET) aims to detect high-energy neutrinos in ice using the radar echo technique; a novel technique for the detection of ultra-high energy neutrinos in ice using a sparse detector array. The Radar Echo Telescope for Neutrinos (RET-N) is a new and innovative way of detecting neutrinos that will complement current approaches by other experiments, such as IceCube and ANITA. Due to the necessity of developing new technologies for RET-N, a proof of principle detector has been deployed in Greenland, the Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays (RET-CR). This detector will observe the in-ice propagation of cascades initiated by high-energy cosmic rays impinging on a high-altitude ice layer. This will provide the first in-nature test of the radar echo technique and will enable further development of the technique and analyses for use in RET-N.
