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The first search for ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrinos using a radio telescope was conducted by Hankins, Ekers and OSullivan (1996). This was a search for nanosecond duration radio Cherenkov pulses from electromagnetic cascades initiated by ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrino interactions in the lunar regolith, and was made using a broad-bandwidth receiver fitted to the Parkes radio telescope, Australia. At the time, no simulations were available to convert the null result into a neutrino flux limit. Since then, similar experiments at Goldstone, USA, and Kalyazin, Russia, have also recorded null results, and computer simulations have been used to model the experimental sensitivities of these two experiments and put useful limits on the UHE neutrino flux. Proposed future experiments include the use of broad-bandwidth receivers, making the sensitivity achieved by the Parkes experiment highly relevant to the future prospects of this field. We have therefore calculated the effective aperture for the Parkes experiment and found that when pointing at the lunar limb, the effective aperture at all neutrino energies was superior to single-antenna, narrow-bandwidth experiments, and that the detection threshold was comparable to that of the double-antenna experiment at Goldstone. However, because only a small fraction of the observing time was spent pointing the limb, the Parkes experiment places only comparatively weak limits on the UHE neutrino flux. Future efforts should use multiple telescopes and broad-bandwidth receivers.
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We report a limit on the ultra-high-energy neutrino flux based on a non-detection of radio pulses from neutrino-initiated particle cascades in the Moon, in observations with the Parkes radio telescope undertaken as part of the LUNASKA project. Due to the improved sensitivity of these observations, which had an effective duration of 127 hours and a frequency range of 1.2-1.5 GHz, this limit extends to lower neutrino energies than those from previous lunar radio experiments, with a detection threshold below 10^20 eV. The calculation of our limit allows for the possibility of lunar-origin pulses being misidentified as local radio interference, and includes the effect of small-scale lunar surface roughness. The targeting strategy of the observations also allows us to place a directional limit on the neutrino flux from the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A.
Lunar Cherenkov experiments aim to detect nanosecond pulses of Cherenkov emission produced during UHE cosmic ray or neutrino interactions in the lunar regolith. Pulses from these interactions are dispersed, and therefore reduced in amplitude, during propagation through the Earths ionosphere. Pulse dispersion must therefore be corrected to maximise the received signal to noise ratio and subsequent chances of detection. The pulse dispersion characteristic may also provide a powerful signature to determine the lunar origin of a pulse and discriminate against pulses of terrestrial radio frequency interference (RFI). This characteristic is parameterised by the instantaneous Total Electron Content (TEC) of the ionosphere and therefore an accurate knowledge of the ionospheric TEC provides an experimental advantage for the detection and identification of lunar Cherenkov pulses. We present a new method to calibrate the dispersive effect of the ionosphere on lunar Cherenkov pulses using lunar Faraday rotation measurements combined with geomagnetic field models.
We use computer simulations to obtain the directional-dependence of the lunar Cherenkov technique for ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrino detection. We calculate the instantaneous effective area of past lunar Cherenkov experiments as a function of neutrino arrival direction, and hence the directional-dependence of the combined limit imposed by GLUE and the experiment at Parkes. We also determine the directional dependence of the aperture of future planned experiments with ATCA, ASKAP and the SKA to a UHE neutrino flux, and calculate the potential annual exposure to astronomical objects as a function of angular distance from the lunar trajectory through celestial coordinates.
We describe an experiment using the Parkes radio telescope in the 1.2-1.5 GHz frequency range as part of the LUNASKA project, to search for nanosecond-scale pulses from particle cascades in the Moon, which may be triggered by ultra-high-energy astroparticles. Through the combination of a highly sensitive multi-beam radio receiver, a purpose-built backend and sophisticated signal-processing techniques, we achieve sensitivity to radio pulses with a threshold electric field strength of 0.0053 $mu$V/m/MHz, lower than previous experiments by a factor of three. We observe no pulses in excess of this threshold in observations with an effective duration of 127 hours. The techniques we employ, including compensating for the phase, dispersion and spectrum of the expected pulse, are relevant for future lunar radio experiments.
During the past decade there have been several attempts to detect cosmogenic ultra high energy (UHE) neutrinos by searching for radio Cerenkov bursts resulting from charged impact showers in terrestrial ice or the lunar regolith. So far these radio searches have yielded no detections, but the inferred flux upper limits have started to constrain physical models for UHE neutrino generation. For searches which use the Moon as a target, we summarize the physics of the interaction, properties of the resulting Cerenkov radio pulse, detection statistics, effective aperture scaling laws, and derivation of upper limits for isotropic and point source models. We report on initial results from the RESUN search, which uses the Expanded Very Large Array configured in multiple sub-arrays of four antennas at 1.45 GHz pointing along the lunar limb. We detected no pulses of lunar origin during 45 observing hours. This implies upper limits to the differential neutrino flux E^2 dN/dE < 0.003 EeV km^{-2} s^{-1} sr^{-1} and < 0.0003 EeV km$^{-2} s^{-1} at 90% confidence level for isotropic and sampled point sources respectively, in the neutrino energy range 10^{21.6} < E(eV) < 10^{22.6}. The isotropic flux limit is comparable to the lowest published upper limits for lunar searches. The full RESUN search, with an additional 200 hours observing time and an improved data acquisition scheme, will be be an order of magnitude more sensitive in the energy range 10^{21} < E(eV) < 10^{22} than previous lunar-target searches, and will test Z burst models of neutrino generation.
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