Capability of the HAWC gamma-ray observatory for the indirect detection of ultra-high energy neutrinos

Understand

The detection of ultra-high energy neutrinos, with energies in the PeV range or above, is a topic of great interest in modern astroparticle physics.

• The importance comes from the fact that these neutrinos point back to the most energetic particle accelerators in the Universe, and provide information about their underlying acceleration mechanisms.
• Atmospheric neutrinos are a background for these challenging measurements, but their rate is expected to be negligible above $\approx$ 1 PeV.
• In this work we describe the feasibility to study ultra-high energy neutrinos based on the Earth-skimming technique, by detecting the charged leptons produced in neutrino-nucleon interactions in a high mass target.