Characteristics of Four Upward-Pointing Cosmic-Ray-like Events Observed with ANITA

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Issue Date
2016-08-08Author
Gorham, P. W.
Nam, J.
Romero-Wolf, A.
Hoover, S.
Allison, P.
Banerjee, O.
Beatty, J. J.
Belov, K.
Besson, David Zeke
Publisher
American Physical Society
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2016 American Physical Society
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Show full item recordAbstract
We report on four radio-detected cosmic-ray (CR) or CR-like events observed with the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), a NASA-sponsored long-duration balloon payload. Two of the four were previously identified as stratospheric CR air showers during the ANITA-I flight. A third stratospheric CR was detected during the ANITA-II flight. Here, we report on characteristics of these three unusual CR events, which develop nearly horizontally, 20–30 km above the surface of Earth. In addition, we report on a fourth steeply upward-pointing ANITA-I CR-like radio event which has characteristics consistent with a primary that emerged from the surface of the ice. This suggests a possible τ-lepton decay as the origin of this event, but such an interpretation would require significant suppression of the standard model τ-neutrino cross section.
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Citation
P. W. Gorham et al. (ANITA Collaboration). Characteristics of Four Upward-Pointing Cosmic-Ray-like Events Observed with ANITA, 2016. American Physical Society. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.071101
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