Speaker
Description
The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is an ultrahigh energy neutrino detector concept consisting of hundreds of phased radio arrays placed on mountaintops, searching for the geomagnetic emission of up-going extensive air showers created by Earth-skimming tau neutrinos. A prototype of the BEACON concept, consisting of a single phased radio array, operated in the White Mountains of California from 2018 to 2025. In 2023, an array of four scintillators was deployed, co-located with the radio array, to validate the detection of down-going extensive air showers initiated by cosmic rays. In this talk, we detail a cosmic ray search performed using scintillator-triggered radio data. Overall, we identify 20 cosmic ray candidates on a background of 0.1 events. In the future, we plan to use this analysis to improve the radio-only beamforming trigger and to validate our predicted neutrino sensitivity.