The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection

¹ LPNHE, CNRS-IN2P3 and Universités Paris VI & VII, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris, France
² Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 6 and CNRS, UMR 7095, 98 bis bd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
³ Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
⁵ SUBATECH, IN2P3-CNRS, Université de Nantes, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, Nantes, France
⁶ Nikhef/Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
⁷ Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
⁹ Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
¹⁰ Oskar Klein Centre and Dept. of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
¹¹ National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012, China
¹² Department of Physics, Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
¹³ Clermont Université, Université Blaise Pascal, CNRS/IN2P3, Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire, BP. 10448, 63000 Clermond-Ferrand, France
¹⁴ Laboratoire AIM, Université Paris Diderot/CEA-IRFU/CNRS, Service d'Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Published online: 11 April 2016

Abstract

High-energy neutrino astronomy will probe the working of the most violent phenomena in the Universe. The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND) project consists of an array of ∼ 10⁵ radio antennas deployed over ∼ 200 000 km² in a mountainous site. It aims at detecting high-energy neutrinos via the measurement of air showers induced by the decay in the atmosphere of τ leptons produced by the interaction of cosmic neutrinos under the Earth surface. Our objective with GRAND is to reach a neutrino sensitivity of 5 × 10⁻¹¹E⁻² GeV⁻¹ cm⁻² s⁻¹ sr⁻¹ above 3 × 10¹⁶ eV. This sensitivity ensures the detection of cosmogenic neutrinos in the most pessimistic source models, and up to 100 events per year are expected for the standard models. GRAND would also probe the neutrino signals produced at the potential sources of UHECRs.