Design of the PUEO Payload

McBride, Keith; PUEO Collaboration,; Abarr, Q.; Allison, P.; Alvarez-Muñiz, J.; Ammerman Yebra, J.; Anderson, T.; Basharina-Freshville, A.; Beatty, J. J.; Beaufore, L.; Besson, D. Z.; Bose, R.; Braun, D.; Chen, P.; Chen, Y.; Clem, J. M.; Coakley, T.; Connolly, A.; Cremonesi, L.; Cummings, A. C.; Deaconu, C.; Flaherty, J.; Gorham, P. W.; Hornhuber, C.; Hoffman, J.; Hughes, K.; Hynous, A.; Jackson, M.; Jung, A.; Ku, Y.; Kuo, C.-Y.; Leone, G.; Lin, C.; Linton, P.; Liu, T. C.; Luszczak, W.; Mackey, S. C.; Martin, Z.; McBride, K.; Miki, C.; Mishra, M.; Nam, J.; Nichol, R. J.; Novikov, A.; Nozdrina, A.; Oberla, E.; Prohira, S.; Prechelt, R.; Pumphrey, H.; Rauch, B. F.; Scrandis, R.; Seckel, D.; Seikh, M. F. H.; Shiao, J.; Simburger, G.; Varner, G. S.; Vieregg, A. G.; Wang, S.-H.; Welling, C.; Wissel, S. A.; Xie, C.; Young, R.; Zas, E.; Zeolla, A.; on behalf of the PUEO collaboration,

doi:10.22323/1.470.0018

Abstract

The primary science goals of the Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) are testing models of both candidate sources of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos (UHEN) and the propagation of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. PUEO is a balloon-borne observatory that scans the Antarctic ice for UHEN through their Askaryan emission (the successor to the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)). The payload design is optimized for the detection of the impulsive radio emissions with characteristics such as wide bandwidth and fast timing. The challenge in reaching high neutrino sensitivity includes outfitting many low-noise channels with linear polarization measurements and efficient filtering of backgrounds, with constraints on size, power, and weight to fit on a balloon-borne instrument. The Main Instrument of 96 dual-polarized antennas and a deployable Low Frequency (LF) instrument are custom-designed to detect the Askaryan emission. The antennas, filtering, and data acquisition system will be discussed in the context of meeting the science requirements of the PUEO mission.