Measuring the polarization reconstruction resolution of the ARIANNA neutrino detector with cosmic rays

Abstract

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).

Developing new analysis tools for near surface radio-based neutrino detectors

“…The experimental data from station 52 are gathered from December 2018 to March 2019. Unlike the neutrino data set, these data contain tagged cosmic ray signal [17,37], which are removed from this set. Therefore, this data set is expected to contain only background noise data.…”

“…The extracted experimental cosmic ray data mentioned above is another data set in this analysis. Obtained from [17,37], this data set was gathered by making various cuts on trigger rate, correlation, and arrival zenith. In total, there are 85 events in this set called experimental tagged cosmic rays, or E-CR52.…”

“…All but one of the deployed hardware systems operate autonomously, with independent power and communication. The ARIANNA experiment has also given rise to the development of innovative simulation and reconstruction tools [13][14][15] that were validated in in-situ measurements or through the measurement of cosmic rays that serve as JCAP10(2023)060 a test beam for neutrino signals [11,[16][17][18][19]. A recent summary of previous results obtained by the ARIANNA experiment is provided in [20].…”

The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery

“…provide equal sensitivity to both polarization states. For a shallow station, the capability to measure the polarization has been tested in-situ [208] and via measurements of cosmic rays [211].…”

Deep-learning-based reconstruction of the neutrino direction and energy for in-ice radio detectors

“…The reconstruction of the neutrino direction and energy requires measurement of the distance to the neutrino vertex, the signal arrival direction, the viewing angle, and the signal polarization, as well as a good understanding of the ice to correct for the bending of signal trajectories due to the changing index-ofrefraction in the upper O(100 m) of the ice sheet [15]. For a shallow detector station, the measurement of the low-level parameters signal arrival direction (including the correction of ice propagation effects) and polarization has been probed experimentally at the South Pole using a transmitter lowered up to 1.7 km deep into the ice [16,17,18] as well as by measuring the radio emissions of cosmic rays [19]. In addition, a novel method for determining the vertex distance was developed and tested in an in situ measurement on the Ross Ice Shelf [14].…”