Speaker
Description
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) should produce ultrahigh-energy neutrinos (UHEN, >10^18 eV) as byproducts of their propagation. Many candidate UHECR source models also predict an emission of UHEN local to their acceleration sites. The Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO), the successor to the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), is a balloon-borne observatory that scanned the Antarctic ice for these UHEN through their Askaryan emission. The payload design is optimized to detect these Askaryan signals using dual-polarized antennas. The challenge in reaching high neutrino sensitivity includes outfitting many low-noise channels with linear-polarization measurements and efficient filtering of backgrounds with size, power, and weight constraints to fit on a balloon-borne instrument. This talk will present the design and first launch of the PUEO mission, and the ongoing analysis efforts.