NUTRIG: Towards an Autonomous Radio Trigger for GRAND

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and initial testing of NUTRIG, an autonomous radio trigger system for GRAND, aiming to improve detection of air showers with a scalable, efficient solution tested at Nan extcay.

Contribution

It introduces NUTRIG, a novel autonomous trigger system for GRAND, with initial deployment, background analysis, and plans for scaling to larger arrays.

Findings

Successful deployment of a prototype at Nan extcay

Initial background data analysis completed

Laboratory tests of signal recovery conducted

Abstract

One of the major challenges for large-scale radio surface arrays, such as the Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND), is the requirement of an autonomous online trigger for radio signals induced by extensive air showers. The NUTRIG project lays the foundations for the development of a pure, efficient, and scalable trigger in the context of GRAND. For this purpose, a GRAND prototype setup of four detection units has been deployed at Nan\c{c}ay, France, which currently serves as the main testing facility for the deployment of this autonomous trigger. This work provides a detailed description of the GRAND@Nan\c{c}ay setup, and a first analysis of background data gathered on site. Initial tests of signal recovery in laboratory conditions are also presented. Finally, near-future plans are outlined to scale NUTRIG to larger pathfinder arrays such as GRANDProto300.