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The Surface Enhancement of the IceTop Air Shower Array

ORAL

Abstract

IceTop is a cosmic ray (CR) detector, comprised of a surface array of ice-Cherenkov detectors and is part of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole. I will present the enhancement that this surface array is currently undergoing, an addition of scintillator panels and radio antennas. This enhancement boosts the scientific capabilities of the array in multiple ways. On one hand, the inclusion of the scintillator panels will allow for a precise characterization of the effects of snow accumulation on the existing IceTop detectors, which can be applied to previously measured data. On the other hand, future measurements will have an enhanced sensitivity to $\geq$ 100 TeV CRs and thus will provide a better veto for the neutrino studies conducted in the ice volume below IceTop. Secondly, the differing response of the scintillators and antennas to the air showers will improve mass-discrimination power of the array, a hurdle that the next generation of CR experiments needs to overcome. The current status and forseen timeline for expansion will be outlined.

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Authors

  • Alan Coleman

    University of Delaware, Bartol Research Institute, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware

  • Anuradha Gupta

    New Jersey Inst of Tech, Pennsylvania State University, Bard College, University of Mississippi, Drexel Univ, Collaborator, University of Dayton, Morgan State University, Louisiana State University, University of Geneva, Instituto Superior Tecnico - Lisboa, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rutgers University, Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Chemical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Department of Physics, Rutgers University, Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, Heisenbergstrasse 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany, Department of Physics and Fribourg Center for Nanomaterials, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 3, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland, The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, 1010 Auckland, New Zealand, Department of Physics, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, Space Research Institute of RAS, Moscow, Russia, Georgetown University, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, University of Delaware, Brookhaven National Laboratory, San Diego State University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA, University of Washington