Speaker
Description
The proliferation of low-earth-orbit satellites over the last decade has significantly increased the risk of radio frequency interference with ground-based radio astronomy experiments. Unintentional, narrow-band emission at protected frequency bands, as well as broadband emission from such satellites have been conclusively detected by radio experiments like LOFAR, NenuFAR and SKA.
Experiments targeting the radio detection of neutrinos — such as RNO-G and IceCube-Gen2 — may be similarly affected with different consequences. Unintentional radio signals, both narrowband or broadband, may cause false-positive triggers, which reduces the trigger efficiency to real particle-based signals. In the worst case, this would lead to a reduced neutrino-search sensitivity.
Thus far, no systematic study has addressed this risk in the context of radio-neutrino detection. In this contribution we present an analysis of two years of RNO-G data, characterising radio frequency interference from large satellite constellations including Starlink and OneWeb, and estimate their impact on experiment live-time and false-trigger rate.