Reconstructing the neutrino energy for in-ice radio detectors

Since summer 2021, the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G) is searching for astrophysical neutrinos at energies > 10 PeV by detecting the radio emission from particle showers in the ice around Summit Station, Greenland. We present an extensive simulation study that shows how RNO-G will be able to measure the energy of such particle cascades, which will in turn be used to estimate the energy of the incoming neutrino that caused them. The location of the neutrino interaction is determined using the differences in arrival times between channels and the electric field of the radio signal is reconstructed using a novel approach based on Information Field Theory. Based on these properties, the shower energy can be estimated. We show that this method can achieve an uncertainty of 13% on the logarithm of the shower energy after modest quality cuts and estimate how this can constrain the energy of the neutrino. The method presented in this paper is applicable to all similar radio neutrino detectors, such as the proposed radio array of IceCube-Gen2.

Automated summary

The Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G) is searching for astrophysical neutrinos with energy > 10 PeV by detecting the radio emission from particle cascades in the ice. They present a simulation study showing how RNO-G can measure the energy of the cascades and estimate the energy of the incoming neutrino. The method uses differences in arrival times and electric field reconstruction to determine the neutrino interaction location and estimate the shower energy.