Sensitivity of BEACON to ultra-high energy diffuse and transient neutrinos
Abstract Ultra-high energy neutrinos ( E > 10 17 eV) can provide insight into the most powerful accelerators in the universe, however their flux is extremely low. The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is a detector concept which efficiently achieves sensitivity to this flux by employing phased radio arrays on mountains, which search for the radio emission of up-going extensive air showers created by Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. Here, we calculate the point-source effective area of BEACON and characterize its sensitivity to transient neutrino fluences with both short (< 15 min) and long (> 1 day) durations. Additionally, by integrating the effective area, we provide an updated estimate of the diffuse flux sensitivity. With just 100 stations, BEACON achieves sensitivity to short-duration transients such as nearby short gamma-ray bursts. With 1000 stations, BEACON achieves a sensitivity to long-duration transients, as well as the cosmogenic flux, ten times greater than existing experiments at 1 EeV. With an efficient design optimized for ultrahigh energy neutrinos, BEACON is capable of discovering the sources of neutrinos at the highest energies.
Authors
- W. Rodrigues de Carvalho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2328-7628)
- Austin Cummings (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9012-7851)
- K. Hughes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4551-9581)
- Z. Martin
- E. Zas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4430-8117)
- Andrew Zeolla (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9663-2082)
- Cosmin Deaconu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4953-6397)
- Jaime Álvarez-Muñiz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2367-0803)
- A. G. Vieregg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4528-9886)
- Eric Oberla (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8344-7999)
- A. Nozdrina (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0594-089X)
- Stephanie Wissel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0569-6978)
- S. Prohira (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8814-6607)
- A. Romero‐Wolf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4992-4162)
- Katharine Mulrey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8026-8020)
- Sergio Cabana-Freire (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9261-1359)
- Yaohua Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5867-5065)
- Ryan Krebs (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9758-9055)
- Jackson Hinkel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4515-8651)
Institutions
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
- University of Kansas (US)
- Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (ES)
- University of Chicago (US)
- National Institute for Subatomic Physics (NL)
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (US)
- University of Warsaw (PL)
- The Ohio State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
- Published
- 2025-09-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2025/09/033
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.74
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- University of Pennsylvania
- California Institute of Technology
- Pennsylvania State University
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
- Nuclear Safety and Security Commission
- Xunta de Galicia
- Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Pennsylvania State University
- Agencia Estatal de Investigación