New architecture of the trigger system in the evolution of the Askaryan Radio Experiment DAQ towards ARA-Next

With the IceCube detection of ultra-high energy cosmic neutrino (UHE) flux and identification of two neutrino sources by IceCube, the field of experimental astrophysics has entered a new era. The Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) experiment seeks to detect UHE neutrinos beyond the reach of IceCube (>10 PeV) employing the radio detection technique that is a most sensitive method to register neutrinos with energies above 1017 eV. To extend ARA’s scientific capabilities, a new DAQ based on RFSoC (Radio Frequency System on a Chip) is under development. This new DAQ will allow us to do more sophisticated calculations at trigger level, providing more freedom to define triggers, including multi-channel triggers such as those in use at collider experiments for decades. We plan to develop, simulate, and implement the most promising triggers in the new ARA DAQ. This includes defining triggers for double pulses from possible in-ice neutrino interactions, using templates for signals from cosmic ray interactions in the air, finding triggers for events coincident in both ARA and IceCube, optimizing triggers for neutrinos from the direction of known astrophysical sources, tagging or rejecting events from known anthropogenic sources using directional information and many more. These new trigger concepts are expected to lower the trigger thresholds and increase the sensitivity of the ARA detector.