Development of a scintillation and radio hybrid detector array at the South Pole
Marie Oehler, Rasha Abbasi, M. Ackermann, Jenni Adams, Juanan Aguilar, M. Ahlers, Maryon Ahrens, Cyril Martin Alispach, A. A. Alves, Najia Moureen Binte Amin, Rui An, K. Andeen, Tyler Anderson, G. Anton, C. Argüelles, Yosuke Ashida, Spencer Axani, X. Bai, Aswathi Balagopal, Anastasia Maria Barbano, S. W. Barwick, Benjamin Bastian, Vedant Basu, S. Baur, Ryan Bay, J. J. Beatty, K.-H. Becker, J. Becker Tjus, Chiara Bellenghi, S. BenZvi, D. Berley, E. Bernardini, D. Besson, G. Binder, D. Bindig, E. Blaufuss, Summer Blot, Matthias Boddenberg, Federico Bontempo, Jürgen Borowka, S. Böser, O. Botner, Jakob Boettcher, Etienne Bourbeau, Federica Bradascio, J. Braun, S. Bron, Jannes Brostean-Kaiser, Sally-Ann Browne, A. Burgman, Ryan T. Burley, Raffaela Busse, Michael Campana, Erin Carnie-Bronca, Chujie Chen, D. Chirkin, K. Choi, Brian Clark, Kenneth Clark, Lew Classen, Alan Coleman, Gabriel Collin, J. M. Conrad, Paul Coppin, Pablo Correa, D. F. Cowen, R. Cross, Christian Dappen, Pranav Dave, C. De Clercq, James DeLaunay, H.-P. Dembinski, Kunal Deoskar, Sam De Ridder, Abhishek Desai, P. Desiati, K. D. de Vries, G. de Wasseige, Meike De With, T. DeYoung, Sukeerthi Dharani, Alejandro Diaz, J. C. Díaz–Vélez, Markus Dittmer, Hrvoje Dujmović, M. Dunkman, M. A. DuVernois, Emily Dvorak, Thomas Ehrhardt, P. Eller, Ralph Engel, Hannah Erpenbeck, John Evans, P. A. Evenson, Kwok Lung Fan, A. R. Fazely, Sebastian Fiedlschuster, Aaron Fienberg, Kirill Filimonov, C. Finley
Abstract
At the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a Surface Array Enhancement is planned, consisting of 32 hybrid stations, placed within the current IceTop footprint. This surface enhancement will considerably increase the detection sensitivity to cosmic rays in the 100 TeV to 1 EeV primary energy range, measure the effects of snow accumulation on the existing IceTop tanks and serve as R&D for the possible future large-scale surface array of IceCube-Gen2. Each station has one central hybrid DAQ, which reads out 8 scintillation detectors and 3 radio antennas. The radio antenna SKALA-2 is used in this array due to its low-noise, high amplification and sensitivity in the 70-350 MHz frequency band. Every scintillation detector has an active area of 1.5 m² organic plastic scintillators connected by wavelength-shifting fibers, which are connected to a silicon photomultiplier. The signals from the scintillation detectors are integrated and digitized by a local custom electronics board and transferred to the central DAQ. When triggered by the scintillation detectors, the filtered and amplified analog waveforms from the radio antennas are read out and digitized by the central DAQ. A full prototype station has been developed and built and was installed at the South Pole in January 2020. It is planned to install the full array by 2026. In this contribution the hardware design of the array as well as the installation plans will be presented.