Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Mid-Atlantic Section Fall Meeting 2020
Volume 65, Number 20
Friday–Sunday, December 4–6, 2020; Virtual
Session C06: Neutrinos I |
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Chair: Stephanie Wissel, Pennsylvania State University |
Friday, December 4, 2020 4:30PM - 5:06PM |
C06.00001: Project 8: A Neutrino Mass Experiment using Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy Invited Speaker: Luiz de Viveiros Project 8 is an experiment that seeks to determine the electron-weighted neutrino mass via the precise measurement of the electron energy in beta decays, with a sensitivity goal of $40\,\mathrm{meV/c}^2$. We have developed a novel technique called Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES), which allows single electron detection and characterization through the measurement of cyclotron radiation emitted by magnetically-trapped electrons produced by a gaseous radioactive source. The technique has been successfully demonstrated on a small scale in waveguides to detect radiation from single electrons, and to measure the continuous spectrum from tritium. The next phase of the experiment will move to larger volumes to increase sensitivity, requiring implementation of CRES in a free-space radiation environment instrumented with a phased antenna array. We present a brief overview of the Project 8 experimental program, highlighting the preliminary measurement of the tritium beta spectrum using CRES in a small scale prototype, and the development of the techniques needed to deploy CRES at large scales. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, December 4, 2020 5:06PM - 5:42PM |
C06.00002: Radio Arrays for ultra-high-energy Cosmic Particles Invited Speaker: Frank Schroeder Digital radio detection is about to become one of the most important techniques for high-energy particle astrophysics. The next generation of radio experiments aims at measuring cosmic-ray nuclei in hybrid observatories with unprecedented accuracy, and at searching for neutrinos and photons at energies beyond those detected until today. Doing so, radio arrays will play a crucial role in multi-messenger observations targeting the longstanding questions of the origin of the highest energy Galactic Cosmic Rays (around $10^{18}\,$eV) and of the extragalactic cosmic rays of even higher energy. During the past decade, several antennas arrays demonstrated that cosmic-ray air showers can be detected with an accuracy similar to those of established techniques. In particular, the energy and direction resolution of state-of-the art radio arrays has become competitive to arrays of particle detectors. Radio arrays are also sensitive to the position of the shower maximum, which is a relatively accurate estimator for the composition of the primary cosmic rays. Moreover, their combination with muon detectors brings additional sensitivity to the type of the primary particle, which can enable unprecedented accuracy for future hybrid detectors. Finally, the radio technique is economic enough to build huge arrays required for the search of ultra-high-energy neutrinos. This talk will give an overview over the state-of-the-art as well as current and planned experiments. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, December 4, 2020 5:42PM - 5:54PM |
C06.00003: Simulation Study of the Fraction of Askaryan Radio Emission from Cosmic-Ray Air Showers at the South Pole. Ek Narayan Paudel, Frank Schroeder Cosmic rays are highly energetic charged particles entering the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space. Above $\sim$ $10^{14}$ eV their very low flux can only be studied indirectly using the extensive air showers they generate when interacting high in the atmosphere. Radio detection of air showers has developed as an effective technique to study these ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. A major component of the radio emission from such air showers is the geomagnetic emission produced by deflection of charged particles within the air shower in the Earth’s magnetic field. This geomagnetic emission is linearly polarized. Radially polarized Askaryan emission is a minor component which is produced due to the varying negative charge excess at the shower front. The resulting polarization of radio emission is the superposition of these two components. In this talk, we are presenting a CORSIKA/CoREAS simulation study of the polarization of the radio emission and the relative fraction of the Askaryan component in cosmic-ray air showers at the South Pole. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, December 4, 2020 5:54PM - 6:06PM |
C06.00004: Classification and Denoising of Radio Signals emitted by Cosmic-Ray Air Showers using Machine Learning Abdul Rehman, Frank Schroeder, Alan Coleman High-energy cosmic rays that are coming from outside our solar system are of great interest to astroparticle physics. Measuring the energy, direction, and composition of these cosmic rays can help us understand the phenomena going on not only within our galaxy but in extragalactic objects as well. These particles enter our atmosphere, interact with it, and produce extensive air showers. Radio emission from these showers can be used to measure the properties of the initial cosmic-ray particles. One significant challenge of radio detection is the continuous radio background which contaminates the radio emission. We present a machine learning technique for the classification and reduction of the background of those radio signals. For that purpose we use Keras, a build-in library in Python, to create a convolutional neural network. For training and testing of the network, we use simulated data-set both for creating the radio signal from extensive air showers and for the background noise. Once trained, the network will be used to lower the radio detection threshold of cosmic rays at Antarctica and also to recover the underlying radio signal from the background. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, December 4, 2020 6:06PM - 6:18PM |
C06.00005: The Surface Enhancement of the IceTop Air Shower Array Alan Coleman, Frank Schroeder IceTop is a cosmic ray (CR) detector, comprised of a surface array of ice-Cherenkov detectors and is part of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole. I will present the enhancement that this surface array is currently undergoing, an addition of scintillator panels and radio antennas. This enhancement boosts the scientific capabilities of the array in multiple ways. On one hand, the inclusion of the scintillator panels will allow for a precise characterization of the effects of snow accumulation on the existing IceTop detectors, which can be applied to previously measured data. On the other hand, future measurements will have an enhanced sensitivity to $\geq$ 100 TeV CRs and thus will provide a better veto for the neutrino studies conducted in the ice volume below IceTop. Secondly, the differing response of the scintillators and antennas to the air showers will improve mass-discrimination power of the array, a hurdle that the next generation of CR experiments needs to overcome. The current status and forseen timeline for expansion will be outlined. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, December 4, 2020 6:18PM - 6:30PM |
C06.00006: Implementation of IceTop data in IceCube realtime alert system Najia Moureen Binte Amin IceCube Neutrino Observatory is searching for astrophysical neutrino candidates and whenever the data acquisition system identifies a small fraction of neutrinos that are likely to be coming from an astrophysical origin, an alert is sent out to the multi-messenger observational community for rapid follow-up observations. A realtime analysis framework is implemented for Multimessenger time-domain astronomy. The main background in astrophysical neutrino detection from the northern hemisphere are the up-going atmospheric neutrinos, and down-going atmospheric muons constitute the largest background from the southern hemisphere. Data from IceTop, the surface component of the neutrino observatory, can Be used to tag in-ice muon bundles produced by cosmic ray air showers as there will be coincident muon hits on the surface. On the contrary, astrophysical neutrinos will be identified alone if they interact inside the detector Our goal is to implement IceTop data in the realtime alert system. [Preview Abstract] |
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