Radio-frequency measurements of coherent transition and Cherenkov radiation: Implications for high-energy neutrino detection

Gorham, P. W.; Saltzberg, D.; Schoessow, P.; Gai, W.; Power, John; Konecny, R.; Conde, Manoel

doi:10.1103/physreve.62.8590

Cited by 72 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Originally calculated using Monte Carlo techniques, the radiated spectrum from purely electromagnetic showers has been directly measured at particle accelerators. Coherent Cherenkov radiation produced by a beam of particles was first observed in tests performed at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator [11]. The experimental confirmation of the Askaryan effect came later in a series of experiments at SLAC, first in silica sand [12,13] and then in rock salt [14] and ice [15], with results in good agreement with the theoretical calculations [16].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Thinned simulations of extremely energetic showers in dense media for radio applications

Álvarez-Muñiz

James

Protheroe

et al. 2009

Astroparticle Physics

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This paper presents our results for full 3-D simulations of very-high to ultra-high energy electromagnetic cascades -and the associated coherent Cherenkov radiation -as might be produced by high-energy neutrino interactions in dense media. Using "thinning" techniques, we develop an algorithm based on the existing "ZHS" code, and demonstrate that the new "ZHS-thinned" code can produce fast and accurate results for showers up to 10 20 eV. Using ZHS-thinned, we develop new parameterisations for the radiation from showers in ice, salt, and the lunar regolith, with a separate treatment of the megaregolith (deep regolith). Our parameterisations include for the first time a method to simulate fluctuations in shower length induced by the LPM effect. Our results, which avoid the pit-falls of scaling simulations from lower energies, allow improved calculations of the detection probability for experiments searching for high-energy neutrinos using the radio technique.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Thinned simulations of extremely energetic showers in dense media for radio applications

Álvarez-Muñiz

James

Protheroe

et al. 2009

Astroparticle Physics

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“…Here, the predicted power is about half the measured power, much closer than in our previous result [23]. The predicted electric field is 90% of the measured electric field.…”

Section: Transition Radiationmentioning

confidence: 48%

Accelerator measurements of the Askaryan effect in rock salt: A roadmap toward teraton underground neutrino detectors

et al. 2005

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We report on further SLAC measurements of the Askaryan effect: coherent radio emission from charge asymmetry in electromagnetic cascades. We used synthetic rock salt as the dielectric medium, with cascades produced by GeV bremsstrahlung photons at the Final Focus Test Beam. We extend our prior discovery measurements to a wider range of parameter space and explore the effect in a dielectric medium of great potential interest to large scale ultra-high energy neutrino detectors: rock salt (halite), which occurs naturally in high purity formations containing in many cases hundreds of km 3 of water-equivalent mass. We observed strong coherent pulsed radio emission over a frequency band from 0.2-15 GHz. A grid of embedded dual-polarization antennas was used to confirm the high degree of linear polarization and track the change of direction of the electric-field vector with azimuth around the shower. Coherence was observed over 4 orders of magnitude of shower energy. The frequency dependence of the radiation was tested over two orders of magnitude of UHF and microwave frequencies. We have also made the first observations of coherent transition radiation from the Askaryan charge excess, and the result agrees well with theoretical predictions. Based on these results we have performed a detailed and conservative simulation of a realistic GZK neutrino telescope array within a salt-dome, and we find it capable of detecting 10 or more contained events per year from even the most conservative GZK neutrino models.

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“…Prior to the first laboratory tests of the Askaryan effect in 1999-2000 [5,6], and subsequent measurements in 2002 [12], it had been largely ignored since initial putative measurements of the effect in air showers were found instead to be due to a process related to synchrotron emission [13,14]. In the mid-to-late 1980's, proposals to observe Askaryan impulses from neutrino interactions in Antarctic ice [15,16,17] and the Lunar regolith [18] created a renewed interest in Askaryan's work.…”

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confidence: 99%

Observations of the Askaryan Effect in Ice

Gorham¹,

Barwick²,

Beatty³

et al. 2007

Phys. Rev. Lett.

144

116

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We report on the first observations of the Askaryan effect in ice: coherent impulsive radio Cherenkov radiation from the charge asymmetry in an electromagnetic (EM) shower. Such radiation has been observed in silica sand and rock salt, but this is the first direct observation from an EM shower in ice. These measurements are important since the majority of experiments to date that rely on the effect for ultra-high energy neutrino detection are being performed using ice as the target medium. As part of the complete validation process for the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, we performed an experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in June 2006 using a 7.5 metric ton ice target, yielding results fully consistent with theoretical expectations.Very large scale optical Cherenkov detectors such as the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) and its successor IceCube have demonstrated the excellent utility of Cherenkov radiation in detection of neutrino interactions at >TeV energies [1, 2] with ice as a target medium. However, at neutrino energies above 100 PeV, the cubic-km scale of such detectors is inadequate to detect more than a handful of events from the predicted cosmogenic neutrino fluxes [3] which represent the most compelling models at these energies. The relevant detector volume for convincing detection and characterization of these neutrinos is in the range of hundreds to thousands of cubic km of water equivalent mass, and the economic constraints of scaling up the optical Cherenkov technique almost certainly preclude extending it much beyond the size of the current IceCube detector, which will be completed early in the next decade.Given the need for an alternative technique with a more tractable economy of scale to reach into the EeV (=1000 PeV) energy regime, a new method which we denote the radio Cherenkov technique, has emerged within the last decade. This method relies on properties of electromagnetic cascades in a dielectric medium. It was first hypothesized by Askaryan [4] and confirmed in 2001 at SLAC [5]. High energy processes such as Compton, Bhabha, and Moller scattering, along with positron annihilation rapidly lead to a ∼ 20% negative charge asymmetry in the electron-photon part of a cascade. In dense media the shower charge bunch is compact, largely contained within a several cm radius. At wavelengths of 10 cm or more, much larger than the characteristic shower bunch size, the relativistic shower bunch appears as a single charge moving through the dielectric over a distance of several meters or more. As an example, a typical shower with mean Bjorken inelasticity y = 0.2, initiated by a E ν = 100 PeV neutrino will create a total number of charged particles at shower maximum of order n e+ +n e− = y E ν /1 GeV ∼ 2 × 10 7 . The net charge is thus n e+ − n e− − ∼ 4 × 10 6 e. Since the radiated power for Cherenkov emission grows quadratically with the charge of the emitter, the coherent power in the cm-to-m wavelength regime is ∼ 10 13 times gre...

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Radio-frequency measurements of coherent transition and Cherenkov radiation: Implications for high-energy neutrino detection

Cited by 72 publications

References 18 publications

Thinned simulations of extremely energetic showers in dense media for radio applications

Thinned simulations of extremely energetic showers in dense media for radio applications

Accelerator measurements of the Askaryan effect in rock salt: A roadmap toward teraton underground neutrino detectors

Observations of the Askaryan Effect in Ice

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