Study of Acoustic Detection of Ultra-high Energy Neutrinos

by Prof. Naoko Kurahashi (Stanford University)

Thursday Jan 21, 2010, 3:30 PM → 5:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Rm 112 (UHM - Watanabe Hall)

Study of Acoustic Ultra-high energy Neutrino Detection (SAUND) phase II uses 1000km2 of ocean as a neutrino detector. SAUND aims to detect comic ray neutrinos of GZK energies and beyond (>10^18eV) acoustically by utilizing the ocean water as the target and an existing US Navy underwater microphone array as sensors. A DAQ system was developed and deployed in 2005. The experiment ran during 2006 and 2007, collecting over 1 TB of data with over 100 days of cumulative livetime. A study of the ocean ambient noise was performed using SAUND data, characterising background noise. Data analysis to isolate neutrino candidate signals is performed in parallel to Monte Carlo studies of the detector to optimize cut efficiencies and set a neutrino flux limit in the ultra-high energy region.