Two new Hawaii-led Initiatives for Ultra-high Energy Particle Astrophysics

by Prof. Peter Gorham (UHM)

Thursday Nov 10, 2011, 3:30 PM → 4:30 PM Pacific/Honolulu

112 (Watanabe Hall)

At Exa-electron-volt (EeV) to Zeta-electron-volt (ZeV) energies, 7-10 orders of magnitude above the highest particle energies we can produce on Earth, the universe is still going strong, and we are at a loss to understand how, where, or why. Two of the most difficult problems are (1) determining the origin of the highest energy particles we can see, the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays UHECRs, which remain a mystery after 60 years of observations; and (2) identifying the ultra-high energy neutrinos that must surely accompany them, but have so far evaded detection. We report on two new NASA initiatives for suborbital and orbital detectors that can address these difficult challenges. The first, the ExaVolt Antenna (EVA) exploits a novel approach to deploying a very large radio reflector antenna in a suborbital long-duration balloon mission, and the second, the Satellite for Wideband Orbital Radio Detection (SWORD), is a satellite in a low-Earth sun-synchronous orbit intended to detect thousands of UHECRs seen via their reflection off the Earth's surface, with a goal of mapping them back onto the sky and finally identifying their sources.

Slides UH_November2011_Gorham_rev1.pdf