Mountaintop Neutrino Detection: A New Concept for the Radio Detection of the Highest Energy Tau Neutrinos

Neutrinos produced by the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays outside our galaxy carry with them information about their sources. As a tau neutrino propagates through the Earth it may undergo a charged-current interaction leading to the production of a tau lepton. A tau lepton exiting the Earth’s surface will decay creating an upwardly propagating air shower. BEACON, Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos, will use a high-altitude antenna array sensitive to these air showers to search for high-energy (E>100 PeV) tau neutrinos. Our group traveled to White Mountain Research Station (WMRS) to attempt to demonstrate that the radio background at a potential site is low enough for a high-altitude detector to distinguish a neutrino signal. We measured the local radio background using a custom-designed broadband transient detector and installed an array of 30-80 MHz antennas with custom electronics that use coherent phasing on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). The instrument will run for the next year as a testbed where we can implement strategies in firmware to reduce trigger rates from the local radio environment. In this poster I will characterize the broadband (30-1000MHz) radio background at WMRS and discuss its potential as a more permanent site for BEACON.