New results from the ANITA Cosmogenic Neutrino Experiment

by Prof. Peter Gorham (UHM)

Thursday Feb 4, 2010, 3:30 PM → 5:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Rm 112 (UHM - Watanabe Hall)

The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment completed its second NASA long-duration balloon flight in January of 2009, with thirty days aloft over the Antarctic continent. ANITA searches for impulsive coherent radio Cherenkov emission in the 200-1200~MHz radio frequency range, arising from the Askaryan charge excess in ultra-high energy neutrino cascades within the Antarctic ice. The second flight of ANITA included significant improvements in the payload sensitivity and efficiency, and the trajectory in the 2008-2009 flight provided a much better view of deep ice than the first flight. Analysis of the large recorded event sample, including in-flight calibration pulses from surface and sub-surface locations, verifies the expected sensitivity. We report on the results of ANITA-II, and new results from a deeper level analysis of the ANITA-I flight which has yielded a serendipitous observation of radio signals from ultra-high energy cosmic rays.