Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Abigail Vieregg - "Discovering the Highest Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos"

The detection of high energy astrophysical neutrinos is an important step toward understanding the most energetic cosmic accelerators.  IceCube, an observatory at the South Pole, has observed the first astrophysical neutrinos and identified potential sources.  However, the best sensitivity at the highest energies comes from detectors that look for coherent radio Cherenkov emission from neutrino interactions.  I will give an overview of the state of experimental efforts, including a new suite of new experiments that are currently being constructed to discover neutrinos at the highest energies.  These include the ground-based experiment RNO-G, which is under construction at Summit Station in Greenland, and the balloon-borne experiment PUEO, which is scheduled to launch in December 2025.

Prof. Vieregg builds radio and millimeter wave experiments and use them for neutrino astrophysics and cosmology with the cosmic microwave background. She currently leads hardware development and analysis efforts on ARA and ANITA, which use the Antarctic ice as a target for the highest energy cosmic neutrinos. Vieregg is the PI of PUEO and RNO, next-generation balloon-borne and ground-based radio detectors for ultra-high energy neutrinos. She is also involved in CMB-S4, a future ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, serving as the technical coordinator and on the executive team.