Evaluation of the potential of a gamma-ray observatory to detect astrophysical neutrinos through inclined showers

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how a ground-based gamma-ray observatory could detect astrophysical neutrinos by analyzing inclined air showers, potentially enabling multi-messenger astrophysics with neutrinos and photons.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a km^2-scale gamma-ray observatory can identify high-energy neutrinos through inclined shower analysis, a novel application for neutrino detection.

Findings

Detects a few neutrino events per year at high energies.

Uses electromagnetic and muonic signal analysis for discrimination.

Shows potential for multi-messenger astrophysics.

Abstract

We assess the capabilities of a ground-based gamma-ray observatory to detect astrophysical neutrinos with energies in the $100\,{\rm TeV}$ to $100\,{\rm PeV}$ range. The identification of these events would be done through the measurement of very inclined extensive air showers induced by downward-going and upward-going neutrinos. The discrimination of neutrino-induced showers in the overwhelming cosmic-ray background is achieved by analysing the balance of the total electromagnetic and muonic signals of the shower at the ground. We demonstrate that a ${\rm km^2}$-scale wide field-of-view ground-based gamma-ray observatory could detect a couple of Very-High to Ultra-High energy (VHE-UHE) neutrino events per year with a reasonable pointing accuracy, making it an interesting facility for multi-messenger studies with both photons and neutrinos.