Michael Schimp Wuppertal

Low zenith UHE neutrinos in the Pierre Auger Observatory in coincidence with gravitational wave events(pdf)

The large acceptance and high detection threshold means the Pierre Auger Observatory is sensitive to neutrinos in an energy range of 10^17–10^20 eV, i.e at ultra-high energies (UHE). This energy scale exceeds those of the high energy astrophysical neutrinos recently measured by IceCube by several orders of magnitude. A measurement of the flux of UHE neutrinos would be a step towards resolving the question of the origin of UHE cosmic rays (UHECR). In particular, this measurement would constrain the presence of bottom-up and top-down UHECR production mechanisms, as well as the GZK mechanism. A search for UHE neutrinos will be presented for zenith angles ranging from 60° to 75°, which is more background-prone than, but complementary to, higher zenith angle searches. Also, a scheme for a follow-up search in coincidence with gravitational wave events from the LIGO/VIRGO detectors will be motivated and shown.