An Andean Deep-Valley Detector for High-Energy Tau Neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper proposes a large-scale deep-valley air-shower array to detect high-energy tau neutrinos in the 1-100 PeV range, enabling new insights into astrophysical sources and neutrino physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel deep-valley detector concept specifically designed for high-energy tau neutrino detection with high precision and background suppression.

Findings

Provides a background-suppressed detection method

Achieves pointing resolution <1 degree

Enables high-energy tau-neutrino astronomy

Abstract

High-energy astrophysical neutrinos, recently discovered by IceCube up to energies of several PeV, opened a new window to the high-energy Universe. Yet much remains to be known. IceCube has excellent muon flavor identification, but tau flavor identification is challenging. This limits its ability to probe neutrino physics and astrophysics. To address this limitation, we present a concept for a large-scale observatory of astrophysical tau neutrinos in the 1-100 PeV range, where a flux is guaranteed to exist. Its detection would allow us to characterize the neutrino sources observed by IceCube, to discover new ones, and test neutrino physics at high energies. The deep-valley air-shower array concept that we present provides highly background-suppressed neutrino detection with pointing resolution <1 degree, allowing us to begin the era of high-energy tau-neutrino astronomy.