skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays: Pathfinder experiment for a next-generation neutrino observatory

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D.

The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays (RET-CR) is a recently funded experiment designed to detect the englacial cascade of a cosmic ray-initiated air shower via in-ice radar, toward the goal of a full-scale, next-generation experiment to detect ultrahigh energy neutrinos in polar ice. For cosmic rays with a primary energy greater than 10 PeV, roughly 10% of an air shower’s energy reaches the surface of a high elevation ice sheet (≳2 ˙km) concentrated into a radius of roughly 10 cm. This penetrating shower core creates an in-ice cascade orders of magnitude more dense than the preceding in-air cascade. Additionally, this dense cascade can be detected via the radar echo technique, where transmitted radio waves are reflected from the ionization deposit left in the wake of the cascade. RET-CR will test the radar echo method in nature, with the in-ice cascade of a cosmic ray-initiated air shower serving as a test beam. In this work, we present the projected event rate and sensitivity based upon a three part simulation using corsika, geant4, and radioscatter. RET-CR expects ~1 radar echo event per day.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Contributing Organization:
Radar Echo Telescope Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1868325
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D., Vol. 104, Issue 10; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (50)

First upper limits on the radar cross section of cosmic-ray induced extensive air showers journal January 2017
Velocity of radio waves in ice by means of a bore-hole interferometric technique journal January 1975
Radioelectric field features of extensive air showers observed with CODALEMA journal November 2006
Prospects for high-elevation radio detection of 0>10 PeV tau neutrinos journal November 2020
Implementation of a custom time-domain firmware trigger for RADAR-based cosmic ray detection
  • Prohira, S.; Besson, D.; Kunwar, S.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 890 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2018.02.051
journal May 2018
Suggestion of coherent radio reflections from an electron-beam induced particle cascade journal October 2019
Tokyo large air shower project journal May 1968
The cosmic-ray air-shower signal in Askaryan radio detectors journal February 2016
Measurement of a phase of a radio wave reflected from rock salt and ice irradiated by an electron beam for detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos
  • Chiba, Masami; Kamijo, Toshio; Tanikawa, Takahiro
  • 5TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ACOUSTIC AND RADIO EEV NEUTRINO DETECTION ACTIVITIES: ARENA 2012, AIP Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4807519
conference January 2013
Reconstruction of air-shower parameters for large-scale radio detectors using the lateral distribution journal February 2016
Neutrino emission from the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 prior to the IceCube-170922A alert journal July 2018
On the feasibility of RADAR detection of high-energy neutrino-induced showers in ice journal January 2015
Particle-level model for radar based detection of high-energy neutrino cascades journal April 2019
The Lateral and the Angular Structure Functions of Electron Showers journal January 1958
LORA: A scintillator array for LOFAR to measure extensive air showers
  • Thoudam, S.; Buitink, S.; Corstanje, A.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 767 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2014.08.021
journal December 2014
Simulating radio emission from air showers with CoREAS
  • Huege, T.; Ludwig, M.; James, C. W.
  • 5TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ACOUSTIC AND RADIO EEV NEUTRINO DETECTION ACTIVITIES: ARENA 2012, AIP Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4807534
conference January 2013
The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND): Science and design journal August 2019
Meep: A flexible free-software package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method journal March 2010
Measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum with IceTop-73 journal August 2013
Features of the Energy Spectrum of Cosmic Rays above 2.5 × 10 18 eV Using the Pierre Auger Observatory journal September 2020
A Radio Detector Array for Cosmic Neutrinos on the Ross Ice Shelf journal April 2013
Design and performance of an interferometric trigger array for radio detection of high-energy neutrinos
  • Allison, P.; Archambault, S.; Bard, R.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 930 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2019.01.067
journal June 2019
Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A journal July 2018
Neutrino vertex reconstruction with in-ice radio detectors using surface reflections and implications for the neutrino energy resolution journal November 2019
Nanosecond time-resolved conductivity studies of pulse-ionized ice. 1. The mobility and trapping of conduction-band electrons in water and deuterium oxide ice journal October 1983
Review of Particle Physics journal August 2020
Telescope Array Radar (TARA) observatory for Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays
  • Abbasi, R.; Othman, M. Abou Bakr; Allen, C.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 767 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2014.08.015
journal December 2014
Current status of the CODALEMA/EXTASIS experiments journal February 2019
Inversion for the density-depth profile of polar firn using a stepped-frequency radar: INVERSION FOR FIRN DENSITY journal July 2013
Modeling in-ice radio propagation with parabolic equation methods journal May 2021
The shape of the radio wavefront of extensive air showers as measured with LOFAR journal February 2015
Reconstructing the cosmic-ray energy from the radio signal measured in one single station journal October 2019
Design, construction and operation of a low-power, autonomous radio-frequency data-acquisition station for the TARA experiment
  • Kunwar, S.; Abbasi, R.; Allen, C.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 797 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2015.05.072
journal October 2015
The detector system for measurement of multiple cosmic muons in the central detector of KASCADE
  • Bozdog, H.; Elzer, M.; Gils, H. J.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 465, Issue 2-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-9002(01)00673-8
journal June 2001
Energy estimation of cosmic rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory journal June 2016
The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna ultra-high energy neutrino detector: Design, performance, and sensitivity for the 2006–2007 balloon flight journal August 2009
On the cosmic-ray energy scale of the LOFAR radio telescope journal November 2020
Rapid techniques for determining annual accumulation applied at Summit, Greenland journal January 2008
Broadband RF Phased Array Design with MEEP: Comparisons to Array Theory in Two and Three Dimensions journal February 2021
RICE limits on the diffuse ultrahigh energy neutrino flux journal April 2006
Design and initial performance of the Askaryan Radio Array prototype EeV neutrino detector at the South Pole journal February 2012
Geant4—a simulation toolkit
  • Agostinelli, S.; Allison, J.; Amako, K.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 506, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-9002(03)01368-8
journal July 2003
Final results of the LOPES radio interferometer for cosmic-ray air showers journal February 2021
Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger journal October 2017
Observation of Radar Echoes from High-Energy Particle Cascades journal March 2020
Relativistic effects in radar detection of ionization fronts produced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays journal June 2010
Measurements and modeling of near-surface radio propagation in glacial ice and implications for neutrino experiments journal August 2018
Feasibility of radar detection of extensive air showers journal January 2016
Cosmic Ray Showers journal December 1960
Radio Neutrino Telescopes- Status and perspectives text January 2019

Similar Records

Search for PeV Gamma-Ray Emission from the Southern Hemisphere with 5 Yr of Data from the IceCube Observatory
Journal Article · Thu Feb 27 00:00:00 EST 2020 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online) · OSTI ID:1868325

First upper limits on the radar cross section of cosmic-ray induced extensive air showers
Journal Article · Sat Nov 19 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Astroparticle Physics · OSTI ID:1868325

Detection of high-energy cosmic-ray showers by atmospheric fluorescence
Miscellaneous · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1989 · OSTI ID:1868325