Development of a Cherenkov Telescope for the Detection of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrinos with EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA

Abstract

The detection of astrophysical neutrinos by IceCube and the potential to constrain source models of ultra-high energy cosmic rays provide the motivation to develop instruments for the observation of neutrinos above 107 GeV. Among the different techniques to detect ultra-high energy neutrinos is the Earth-skimming technique. It makes use of the fact that the tau produced in a tau neutrino interaction inside the Earth can emerge from the ground and initiate an upward-going particle shower in the atmosphere. The particle shower and thus the neutrino can be reconstructed by measuring the Cherenkov and radio emission from the shower particles. In this presentation, we discuss our ongoing development of a Cherenkov telescope for the detection of tau neutrinos, which is to be deployed on the Extreme Universe Space Observatory Super Pressure Balloon 2 (EUSO-SPB2) and is a precursor experiment for the proposed Probe of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) mission. POEMMA aims at the detection of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays and ultrahigh energy neutrinos from low earth orbit. The 1 m2 Cherenkov telescope for EUSO-SPB2 will use silicon photomultipliers coupled to a 100 MS/s readout based on the ASIC for General Electronics for TPC's (AGET) switch capacitor ring sampler. We present the optics, results from our studies to qualify the readout concept and the design of the mechanical integration of the photon detectors and the readout into the telescope.