Speaker
Description
The Radio Neutrino Observatory Greenland (RNO-G) utilizes a network of in-ice radio antennas to detect the radio emission from ultra-high-energy neutrinos interacting with the ice. To reconstruct neutrino properties, such as energy and direction, an accurate calibration of the detector response is indispensable. In RNO-G, the complex interplay between electrical and optical components make a pre-deployment laboratory calibration insufficient, necessitating an in-situ calibration approach. In analogy to the well-established galactic calibration in air-shower radio detectors, we have developed a novel method which uses, in addition to a sub-dominant galactic component and system noise, the thermal radiation from the surrounding ice as a ``standard candle'' for an absolute gain calibration.
In this contribution, we introduce the novel concept of the in-situ absolute gain calibration for RNO-G, present preliminary results from the first calibration campaign, and discuss the implications for neutrino detection and future improvements.