Identification of ultra-high-energy neutrinos in vertical air showers with surface detectors
Abstract
We investigate the potential of surface detector arrays to identify ultra-high-energy neutrinos using vertical air showers with zenith angle θ≤ 60∘, a region largely unexplored in current searches. The method exploits the enhanced electromagnetic component at ground level arising from energetic leptons produced in neutrino interactions. Using detailed air-shower and detector simulations, we show that observables sensitive to the electromagnetic and muonic content provide genuine discrimination between neutrino-induced and hadron-induced showers. This is demonstrated both with idealized shower quantities and with realistic detector-level signals based on water-Cherenkov and scintillator detectors. The corresponding neutrino identification efficiency is used to derive the effective mass and, primarily, the effective area of the array under background-rejection requirements appropriate to targeted multi-messenger searches. Although not competitive with inclined-shower searches under the stringent background rejection factors required for diffuse-flux analyses, this approach establishes the feasibility of a vertical detection channel, extending the field of view of surface arrays and providing a complementary tool for multi-messenger observations of transient sources.
Related
- Radio measurements of air showers with the IceCube-Gen2 surface prototype station at the Pierre Auger Observatory
- An end-to-end experimental pipeline for automated track identification for paleo-detectors
- Fisher Information Velocity: A New Geometric Channel for Precision Glitch Identification in Gravitational-Wave Detectors
- Hardware-efficient neural networks for FPGA-based radio triggering of extensive air showers
- Reconstruction of very inclined air showers with radio data and application to the first GRANDProto300 cosmic-ray candidates
BibTeX
@misc{alvarezmuniz2026identification,
title = {{Identification of ultra-high-energy neutrinos in vertical air showers with surface detectors}},
author = {Jaime Alvarez-Muñiz and Ruben Conceição and Pedro J. Costa and David Dias and Mário Pimenta},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.21495},
eprint = {2610.21495},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21495},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Identification of ultra-high-energy neutrinos in vertical air showers with surface detectors
AU - Jaime Alvarez-Muñiz
AU - Ruben Conceição
AU - Pedro J. Costa
AU - David Dias
AU - Mário Pimenta
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.21495
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21495
AB - We investigate the potential of surface detector arrays to identify ultra-high-energy neutrinos using vertical air showers with zenith angle θ≤ 60^∘, a region largely unexplored in current searches. The method exploits the enhanced electromagnetic component at ground level arising from energetic leptons produced in neutrino interactions. Using detailed air-shower and detector simulations, we show that observables sensitive to the electromagnetic and muonic content provide genuine discrimination between neutrino-induced and hadron-induced showers. This is demonstrated both with idealized shower quantities and with realistic detector-level signals based on water-Cherenkov and scintillator detectors. The corresponding neutrino identification efficiency is used to derive the effective mass and, primarily, the effective area of the array under background-rejection requirements appropriate to targeted multi-messenger searches. Although not competitive with inclined-shower searches under the stringent background rejection factors required for diffuse-flux analyses, this approach establishes the feasibility of a vertical detection channel, extending the field of view of surface arrays and providing a complementary tool for multi-messenger observations of transient sources.
ER -