Preliminary Exam |
Events on Thursday, December 8th, 2022
- Constraining the Diffuse Flux of Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos with the Askaryan Radio Array’s Largest Analysis Ever
- Time: 2:00 pm
- Place:
- Speaker: Abigail Bishop, Physics Graduate Student
- Abstract: In the race to discover the first ultra-high energy neutrinos and zoom in on the ultra-high energy neutrino flux, the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) is a frontrunner. Similar to the world renowned IceCube Neutrino Observatory, ARA deploys radio antennas in glaciers and searches for the ultra-high energy Askaryan emission radiating from cosmic neutrino interactions in the ice. Even though ARA can see neutrino interactions in volumes far greater than IceCube, the tremendously low flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos makes them even rarer to observe than the mid-high energy neutrinos IceCube detects. ARA has been operating for a decade and is composed of 5 separate stations, but historically each analysis has analyzed only one or two stations over the course of a few years. Presently, our collaboration is building the framework for a full 5 Station Analysis over every year of ARA operation and I am on the ground level of this effort. I propose a thesis project contributing to this leading edge, comprehensive neutrino search, performing an estimate of the diffuse neutrino flux considering every byte of ARA data, with personal emphasis on searching for unique signal topologies that can allow us to confidently identify neutrino candidates in, what used to be classified, as noise.
- Host: Albrecht Karle