Status of the TREND project

TL;DR

The TREND project has developed an autonomous antenna array capable of detecting high-energy air showers, confirming radio detection as a mature technique, and aims to search for tau neutrinos.

Contribution

This paper reports the successful development and validation of an autonomous radio antenna array for EAS detection, advancing the radio detection technique for cosmic rays.

Findings

Achieved autonomous detection of EAS with the TREND array.

Confirmed radio-candidate events as cosmic rays using parallel particle detectors.

Array has been operational since 2011, covering 1.2 km^2.

Abstract

The Tianshan Radio Experiment for Neutrino Detection (TREND) is a sino-french collaboration (CNRS/IN2P3 and Chinese Academy of Science) developing an autonomous antenna array for the detection of high energy Extensive Air Showers (EAS) on the site of the 21CMA radio observatory. The autonomous detection and identification of EAS was achieved by TREND on a prototype array in 2009. This result was confirmed soon after when EAS radio-candidates could be tagged as cosmic ray events by an array of particle detectors running in parallel at the same location. This result is an important milestone for TREND, and more generally, for the maturation of the EAS radio-detection technique. The array is presently composed of 50 antennas covering a total area of ~1.2 km^2, running in steady conditions since March 2011. We are presently processing the data to identify EAS radio-candidates. In a long term perspective, TREND is intended to search for high energy tau neutrinos. Here we only report on the results achieved so far by TREND.