The ARIANNA detector is designed to detect neutrinos with energies above 1017 eV. Due to the similarities in generated radio signals, cosmic rays are often used as test beams for neutrino detectors. Some ARIANNA detector stations are equipped with antennas capable of detecting air showers. Since the radio emission properties of air showers are well understood, and the polarization of the radio signal can be predicted from the arrival direction, cosmic rays can be used as a proxy to assess the reconstruction capabilities of the ARIANNA neutrino detector. We report on dedicated efforts of reconstructing the polarization of cosmic-ray radio pulses. After correcting for difference in hardware, the two stations used in this study showed similar performance in terms of event rate and agreed with simulation. Subselecting high quality cosmic rays, the polarizations of these cosmic rays were reconstructed with a resolution of 2.5° (68% containment), which agrees with the expected value obtained from simulation. A large fraction of this resolution originates from uncertainties in the predicted polarization because of the contribution of the subdominant Askaryan effect in addition to the dominant geomagnetic emission. Subselecting events with a zenith angle greater than 70° removes most influence of the Askaryan emission, and, with limited statistics, we found the polarization uncertainty is reduced to 1.3° (68% containment).
The ARIANNA detector is designed to detect neutrinos of energies above 10 16 eV. Due to the similarities in generated radio signals, cosmic rays are often used as test beams for neutrino detectors. Some ARIANNA detector stations are equipped with antennas capable of detecting air showers. The radio emission properties of air showers are well understood, and the polarization of the radio signal can be predicted from arrival direction with high precision. For this reason, cosmic rays can be used as a proxy to assess the reconstruction capabilities of the ARIANNA neutrino detector. We report on dedicated efforts of reconstructing the polarization of cosmic-ray radio pulses. A total of 148 cosmic rays are identified from over 90,000 triggered events collected between Nov 21, 2018 and Mar 15, 2019. A cut was put on these events requiring them to have a signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of at least 4.5 in all upward-facing channels. This was to improve the performance of arrival direction and polarization reconstruction algorithms. Polarization of these cosmic rays were reconstructed with a resolution of 3.5 degrees (68% containment), which agrees with the expected value we obtained from simulation. Furthermore, if we subselect events with zenith angle greater than 70 deg, the contribution to polarization of Askaryan effect is reduced, which reduces the error in the predicted polarization. With limited statistics, we find the polarization uncertainty is reduced to 1.3 deg (68% containment).
The ARIANNA experiment is a proposed Askaryan detector designed to record radio signals induced by neutrino interactions in the Antarctic ice. Because of the low neutrino flux at high energies, the physics output is limited by statistics. Hence, an increase in sensitivity significantly improves the interpretation of data and offers the ability to probe new parameter spaces. The trigger thresholds are limited by the rate of triggering on unavoidable thermal noise fluctuations. The real-time thermal noise rejection algorithm enables the thresholds to be lowered substantially and increases the sensitivity by up to a factor of two compared to the current ARIANNA capabilities. A deep learning discriminator, based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), is implemented to identify and remove a high percentage of thermal events in real time while retaining most of the neutrino signals. We describe a CNN that runs on the current ARIANNA microcomputer and retains 95% of the neutrino signals at a thermal rejection factor of 10 5 . Finally, the experimental verification from lab measurements are conducted.
Development of an in-situ calibration device of firn properties for Askaryan neutrino detectors Jakob Beise , * and Christian Glaser on behalf of the ARIANNA Collaboration
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