Cosmic Ray Observations using Coincident Scintillator and Radio Signals with the Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON)
Abstract
At energies above 100 PeV, coherent radio frequency (RF) emission across the 10 -- 1000 MHz band from cosmic particle-induced atmospheric showers becomes increasingly dominant, making radio detection a powerful probe at ultrahigh energies. The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) considers mountaintop phased radio arrays to monitor large areas at the horizon for upward-going geomagnetic emission in the 30 -- 80 MHz band produced as a consequence of Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. As part of ongoing efforts to measure the sensitivity of BEACON to such signals, the BEACON prototype identifies cosmic rays through the same emission mechanism. Prior to 2023, BEACON operated a four-antenna prototype, which successfully demonstrated identification of coherent and impulsive sources using a beamforming RF trigger. In 2023, we upgraded the instrument to six newly designed antennas and added an independent scintillator array to cross-validate radio-detectable cosmic rays. This work details the observation of 22 candidate cosmic-ray events in a scintillator-coincidence-triggered dataset using selection cuts based on expected radio characteristics. A simulation of the hybrid-instrument performance verifies this observation rate to within an order of magnitude. We estimate a background of 0.11 events by applying the selection cuts to synthetic datasets of uncorrelated radio-scintillator pairs that are randomly formed using fixed-rate software-triggered data. The reconstructed signal polarization angles are consistent with pure geomagnetic emission compared to various background classes.
Related
- Searches for coincident Gravitational Waves and High-Energy Neutrinos from the KM3NeT and ANTARES telescopes during O3
- Deep Optical Follow-up Observations to IceCube Cosmic Neutrinos: a case for IC230724A with Subaru/HSC and prospects with Rubin/LSST
- Boosted Dark Matter Directionality in Large Liquid Scintillator Detectors
- Cosmogenic neutrinos from FRII galaxies as potential origin of the ultra-high-energy KM3-230213A event
- Gravitational lensing of neutrinos through the lens of decoherence
BibTeX
@misc{martin2026cosmic,
title = {{Cosmic Ray Observations using Coincident Scintillator and Radio Signals with the Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON)}},
author = {Zachary Martin and Jackson Hinkel and Kira Perna and Andrew Zeolla and Jaime Alvarez-Muñiz and Sergio Cabana-Freire and Washington Carvalho Jr. and Austin Cummings and Cosmin Deaconu and Kaeli Hughes and Ryan Krebs and Youwei Liu and Marek Michulka and Katharine Mulrey and Alisa Nozdrina and Eric Oberla and Steven Prohira and Andrés Romero-Wolf and Abigail G. Vieregg and Stephanie A. Wissel and Enrique Zas},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.29923},
eprint = {2610.29923},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29923},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Cosmic Ray Observations using Coincident Scintillator and Radio Signals with the Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON)
AU - Zachary Martin
AU - Jackson Hinkel
AU - Kira Perna
AU - Andrew Zeolla
AU - Jaime Alvarez-Muñiz
AU - Sergio Cabana-Freire
AU - Washington Carvalho Jr.
AU - Austin Cummings
AU - Cosmin Deaconu
AU - Kaeli Hughes
AU - Ryan Krebs
AU - Youwei Liu
AU - Marek Michulka
AU - Katharine Mulrey
AU - Alisa Nozdrina
AU - Eric Oberla
AU - Steven Prohira
AU - Andrés Romero-Wolf
AU - Abigail G. Vieregg
AU - Stephanie A. Wissel
AU - Enrique Zas
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.29923
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29923
AB - At energies above 100 PeV, coherent radio frequency (RF) emission across the 10 -- 1000 MHz band from cosmic particle-induced atmospheric showers becomes increasingly dominant, making radio detection a powerful probe at ultrahigh energies. The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) considers mountaintop phased radio arrays to monitor large areas at the horizon for upward-going geomagnetic emission in the 30 -- 80 MHz band produced as a consequence of Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. As part of ongoing efforts to measure the sensitivity of BEACON to such signals, the BEACON prototype identifies cosmic rays through the same emission mechanism. Prior to 2023, BEACON operated a four-antenna prototype, which successfully demonstrated identification of coherent and impulsive sources using a beamforming RF trigger. In 2023, we upgraded the instrument to six newly designed antennas and added an independent scintillator array to cross-validate radio-detectable cosmic rays. This work details the observation of 22 candidate cosmic-ray events in a scintillator-coincidence-triggered dataset using selection cuts based on expected radio characteristics. A simulation of the hybrid-instrument performance verifies this observation rate to within an order of magnitude. We estimate a background of 0.11 events by applying the selection cuts to synthetic datasets of uncorrelated radio-scintillator pairs that are randomly formed using fixed-rate software-triggered data. The reconstructed signal polarization angles are consistent with pure geomagnetic emission compared to various background classes.
ER -