Search for: All records

The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is a concept for a neutrino telescope designed to detect radio emission from upgoing air showers induced by tau leptons that are generated by ultra-high energy tau neutrino interactions in the Earth. This detection mechanism provides a pure measurement of the tau flavor of cosmogenic and astrophysical neutrinos, which could be used to set limits on the observed flavor ratios in a manner complimentary to the all-flavor neutrino flux measurements made by other experiments. A BEACON prototype has been installed at high elevation at Barcroft Field Station for several years and consists of 4 crossed-dipole antennas operating in the 30-80 MHz band and connected to a custom DAQ. The BEACON prototype is at high elevation to maximize effective volume and uses a directional beamforming trigger to reduce man-made background signals at the trigger level. This prototype system is expected to be capable of detecting downgoing cosmic ray air showers, a signal like the upgoing tau lepton air shower, but distinguishable chiefly by arrival direction. Here we give an overview of the BEACON experiment and present an ongoing cosmic ray search with data from the BEACON prototype. Cosmic ray candidates that are identified by this search will be used to experimentally determine the sensitivity of the BEACON concept to the known cosmic ray flux, which can then be used to predict the sensitivity of a full-scale BEACON array to the cosmogenic and astrophysical neutrino fluxes.