The sensitivity of past and near-future lunar radio experiments to ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos

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• 作者：J.D. Bray ; ^a ; ^b ; ^c ; ^{justin.bray@manchester.ac.uk" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Ultra-high-energy neutrinos ; Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays ; Radio detection ; Moon
• 刊名：Astroparticle Physics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：April 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：77
• 期：Complete
• 页码：1-20
• 全文大小：1449 K

文摘

Various experiments have been conducted to search for the radio emission from ultra-high-energy (UHE) particles interacting in the lunar regolith. Although they have not yielded any detections, they have been successful in establishing upper limits on the flux of these particles. I present a review of these experiments in which I re-evaluate their sensitivity to radio pulses, accounting for effects which were neglected in the original reports, and compare them with prospective near-future experiments. In several cases, I find that past experiments were substantially less sensitive than previously believed. I apply existing analytic models to determine the resulting limits on the fluxes of UHE neutrinos and cosmic rays (CRs). In the latter case, I amend the model to accurately reflect the fraction of the primary particle energy which manifests in the resulting particle cascade, resulting in a substantial improvement in the estimated sensitivity to CRs. Although these models are in need of further refinement, in particular to incorporate the effects of small-scale lunar surface roughness, their application here indicates that a proposed experiment with the LOFAR telescope would test predictions of the neutrino flux from exotic-physics models, and an experiment with a phased-array feed on a large single-dish telescope such as the Parkes radio telescope would allow the first detection of CRs with this technique, with an expected rate of one detection per 140 h.