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Acceptances for space-based and ground-based fluorescence detectors, and inference of the neutrino-nucleon cross-section above 1019  eV

Sergio Palomares-Ruiz*, Andrei Irimia†, and Thomas J. Weiler‡

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235-1807, USA

  • *Electronic address: sergio.palomares-ruiz@vanderbilt.edu
  • †Electronic address: andrei.irimia@vanderbilt.edu
  • ‡Electronic address: tom.weiler@vanderbilt.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 73, 083003 – Published 14 April, 2006

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.73.083003

Abstract

Detection of ultrahigh energy neutrinos will be useful for unraveling the dynamics of the most violent sources in the cosmos and for revealing the neutrino cross-section at extreme energy. If there exists a Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz’min (GZK) suppression of cosmic-ray events above EGZK∼5×1019  eV, as predicted by theory, then the only messengers of energies beyond EGZK are neutrinos. Cosmic neutrino fluxes can initiate air-showers through interaction in the atmosphere, or in the Earth. Neutrino trajectories will be downgoing to nearly horizontal in the former case, and “Earth-skimming” in the latter case. Thus it is important to know the acceptances (event rate/flux) of proposed air-shower experiments for detecting both types of neutrino-initiated events. We calculate these acceptances for fluorescence detectors, both space-based as with the EUSO and OWL proposals, and ground-based, as with Auger, HiRes and Telescope Array. The neutrino cross-section σνNCC is unknown at energies above 5.2×1013  eV. Although the popular QCD extrapolation of lower-energy physics offers the cross-section value of 0.54×10−31(Eν/1020  eV)0.36  cm2, new physics could raise or lower this value. Therefore, we present the acceptances of horizontal (HAS) and upgoing (UAS) air-showers as a function of σνNCC over the range 10−34 to 10−30  cm2. The dependences of acceptances on neutrino energy, shower-threshold energy, shower length, and shower column density are also studied. We introduce a cloud layer, and study its effect on rates as viewed from space and from the ground. For UAS, we present acceptances for events over land (rock), and over the ocean (water). Acceptances over water are larger by about an order of magnitude, thus favoring space-based detectors. We revisit the idea of Kusenko and Weiler [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 161101 (2002)] to infer σνNCC at Eν≳1020 from the ratio of HAS-to-UAS events, and obtain favorable results. Included in our UAS calculations are realistic energy-losses for taus, and Earth-curvature effects. Most of our calculation is analytic, allowing insight into the various subprocesses that collectively turn an incident neutrino into an observable shower.

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Phys. Rev. D 73, 083003– Published 14 April, 2006
  • Received 13 January 2006

© 2006 American Physical Society

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