ON RADIO DETECTION OF ULTRAHIGH-ENERGY NEUTRINOS IN ANTARCTIC ICE

Interactions of ultrahigh energy neutrinos of cosmological origin in l arge volumes of dense, radiotransparent media can be detected via cohe rent Cherenkov emission from accompanying electromagnetic showers. Ant arctic ice meets the requirements for an efficient detection medium fo r a radio frequency neutrino telescope. We carefully estimate the sens itivity of realistic antennas embedded deep in the ice to 100 MHz-1 GH z signals generated by predicted neutrino fluxes from active galactic nuclei. Our main conclusion is that a single radio receiver can probe an similar to 1 km(3) volume for events with primary energy near 2 PeV and that the total number of events registered would be roughly 200 t o 400 yr(-1) in our most conservative estimate. An array of such recei vers would increase sensitivity dramatically. A radio neutrino telesco pe could directly observe and test our understanding of the most power ful particle accelerators in the universe, simultaneously testing the standard theory of particle physics at unprecedented energies.