Radio Cherenkov signals from the Moon: neutrinos and cosmic rays

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of lunar radio Cherenkov signals to detect astrophysical neutrinos and probe non-standard neutrino interactions, considering cosmic ray backgrounds and effective lunar aperture models.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of lunar radio detection capabilities for neutrinos, incorporating cosmic ray backgrounds and non-standard interaction effects.

Findings

Neutrino signals are challenging to detect due to low flux and cosmic ray background.

Lunar radio detection is promising for studying astrophysical neutrinos.

Non-standard neutrino interactions could significantly alter detection prospects.

Abstract

Neutrino production of radio Cherenkov signals in the Moon is the object of radio telescope observations. Depending on the energy range and detection parameters, the dominant contribution to the neutrino signal may come from interactions of the neutrino on the Moon facing the telescope, rather than neutrinos that have traversed a portion of the Moon. Using the approximate analytic expression of the effective lunar aperture from a recent paper by Gayley, Mutel and Jaeger, we evaluate the background from cosmic ray interactions in the lunar regolith. We also consider the modifications to the effective lunar aperture from generic non-standard model neutrino interactions. A background to neutrino signals are radio Cherenkov signals from cosmic ray interactions. For cosmogenic neutrino fluxes, neutrino signals will be difficult to observe because of low neutrino flux at the high energy end and large cosmic ray background in the lower energy range considered here. We show that lunar radio detection of neutrino interactions is best suited to constrain or measure neutrinos from astrophysical sources and probe non-standard neutrino-nucleon interactions such as microscopic black hole production.