On Radio Detection of Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos in Antarctic Ice

Abstract

Interactions of ultrahigh energy neutrinos of cosmological origin in large volumes of dense, radio-transparent media can be detected via coherent Cherenkov emission from accompanying electromagnetic showers. Antarctic ice meets the requirements for an efficient detection medium for a radio frequency neutrino telescope. We carefully estimate the sensitivity of realistic antennas embedded deep in the ice to 100 MHz - 1 GHz signals generated by predicted neutrino fluxes from active galactic nuclei. Our main conclusion is that a {\it single radio receiver} can probe a $\sim 1$ ${\rm km}^3$ volume for events with primary energy near 2 PeV and that the total number of events registered would be roughly 200 to 400 ${\rm year}^{-1}$ in our most conservative estimate. An array of such receivers would increase sensitivity dramatically. A radio neutrino telescope could directly observe and test our understanding of the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe, simultaneously testing the standard theory of particle physics at unprecedented energies.