Calendar

Astrophysics, Gravitation and Cosmology Seminar - Abigail Vieregg (University of Chicago) "Using Radio Detectors to Discover the Highest Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos"

Speaker: Abigail Vieregg
Date: 8/30/2023
Time: 12 p.m.
Location: Loomis 464
Event Contact: Deanna Frye
ddebord@illinois.edu
Sponsor: Department of Physics
Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
 

The detection of high energy astrophysical neutrinos is an important step toward understanding the most energetic cosmic accelerators.  IceCube, an observatory at the South Pole, has observed the first astrophysical neutrinos and identified at least one potential source.  However, the best sensitivity at the highest energies comes from detectors that look for coherent radio Cherenkov emission from neutrino interactions.  I will give an overview of the state of current experimental efforts, and then discuss a suite of new experiments that are currently being constructed to discover neutrinos at the highest energies and push the energy threshold for radio detection down to overlap with the energy range probed by IceCube, thus covering the full astrophysical energy range out to the highest energies, and opening up new phase space for discovery.  These include the ground-based experiments RNO-G and IceCube-Gen2, as well as the balloon-borne experiment PUEO.