Detecting ultra high energy neutrinos with LOFAR

The NuMoon project aims to detect signals of Ultra High Energy (UHE) Cosmic Rays with radio telescopes on Earth using the Lunar Cherenkov technique at low frequencies (similar to 150 MHz). The advantage of using low frequencies is the much larger effective detecting volume, with as trade-off the cut-off in sensitivity at lower energies. A first upper limit on the UHE neutrino flux from data of the Westerbork Radio Telescope (WSRT) has been published, while a second experiment, using the new LOFAR telescope, is in preparation. The advantages of LOFAR over WSRT are the larger collecting area, the better pointing accuracy and the use of ring buffers, which allow the implementation of a sophisticated self-trigger algorithm. The expected sensitivity of LOFAR reaches flux limits within the range of some theoretical production models. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.