The Nature of Horizontally Polarized Events in ANITA 1: MC Simulations

The ANITA (ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) experiment is a balloon-borne, broadband antenna array flown over the Antarctic continent. It is designed to detect radio Cherenkov emission from UHE astrophysical neutrinos (E $>10^{18}$) interactions in the ice below. ANITA 1 completed a 35 day flight during the Austral summer of 2006-2007, observing a number of horizontally polarized events, which could be caused by radio emission from downward going cosmic rays reflecting off the ice. A detailed simulation was written to calculate ANITA's sensitivity to reflected cosmic ray radio signals.