Proposal to Measure the Performance Potential of the TAUWER Neutrino Detector

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

TAUWER, a collaboration of Carnegie Mellon, Rome, and Turkey, uses the earth-skimming neutrino detection scheme initially proposed by Fargion in 1999-2001. TAUWER will implement it so as to provide an instrument of greater sensitivity, straight-forward expansion by an order of magnitude, and relatively low cost. TAUWER is a two-layer scintillator sampling telescope to detect the upward-moving air showers from tau hadronic decays. The hadronic decay channel of the tau-lepton makes possible a simple detection scheme based on identifying gammas, electrons and muons and determining their spatial density around the shower axis. Thus, detecting the showers from a set of tau-lepton decays gives a good estimate of the parent tau-neutrino spectrum. TAUWER is expandable, should future data indicate that need. Previous work by this group has demonstrated that TAUWER detectors can separate upward and downward moving tracks by time of flight and to separate electrons and muons by waveform analysis after a Pb converter. This award provides funding to address the next crucial question in TAUWER validation - how well can one reject Extensive Air Shower (EAS) events in which independent particles hit the two scintillator tiles of a detector station and produce a signal that mimics the timing associated with an upward-moving shower particle? The three groups will work on building a library of tau-neutrino interactions and air shower development to use in building the multivariate likelihood scheme needed to go from shower profile and composition information back to parent neutrino energy and angle. Finally, there will be efforts to develop more cost-effective methods to handle the readout and waveform digitization. All these steps are crucial to the ultimate goal of constructing TAUWER as a premiere Neutrino Astronomy (NA) telescope to complement and extend the work now underway at IceCube and Auger. Broader Impacts: Ultrahigh-energy cosmic neutrinos potentially open the way to understanding the acceleration mechanisms in Active Galactic Nuclei and other black-hole related sources distributed throughout the space-time continuum of our universe. The successful implementation and operation of TAUWER will have broad impact on black hole cosmology and on the fundamental question of the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays, one of the fundamental questions of our time.