What am I actually doing?

The Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G) is situated at Summit Station and is intended to detect Askaryan emission from ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrinos above 10 PeV. The detector is proposed to have 35 stations of which 7 have been installed so far. Each station consists of 3 strings carrying dipole antennas embedded up to 100 meters in ice. These antennas capture the horizontal and vertical polarization of the Askaryan signal and work in conjunction with surface antennas. The detector is designed to trigger on impulsive radio signals from neutrino-nucleon interactions in the ice.  

What is a neutrino (credit to ice cube - https://icecube.wisc.edu/outreach/neutrinos/)

Neutrinos are elementary particles that lack an electric charge and are produced when particles change identities, like during the decay of radioactive elements—or as Frederick Reines would say,

“…the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being.”

The name neutrino was coined by Enrico Fermi as a wordplay on “neutrone,” the Italian word for neutron, which is what Wolfgang Pauli, who first postulated the particle, had dubbed it. Of all the high-energy particles, only weakly interacting neutrinos can directly convey astronomical information from the edges of the universe—from deep inside the most cataclysmic processes.

Our current understanding indicates that there are three different types of neutrinos, each relating to a charged particle. Copiously produced in high-energy collisions, traveling essentially at the speed of light, and unaffected by magnetic fields, neutrinos meet the basic requirements for astronomy. Their unique advantage arises from a fundamental property: they are affected only by the weakest of nature’s forces (except for gravity) and are therefore essentially unabsorbed as they travel cosmological distances between their origins and us.

Where do they come from?

From what we know today, a majority of the neutrinos zooming through space were born around 15 billion years ago, soon after the birth of the universe. Since that time, the universe has continuously expanded and cooled, and neutrinos have just kept on going. They constitute a cosmic neutrino background radiation similar to the more familiar cosmic microwave background radiation. Other neutrinos are continuously being produced from  nuclear power stations, particle accelerators, nuclear bombs, and general atmospheric phenomena as well as from the births, collisions, and deaths of stars, particularly the explosions of supernovas.  A collision involving a high-energy proton will also produce neutrinos, so cosmic ray sources also produce neutrinos.

Radio Neutrino Observatory - Greenland

A neutrino comes towards ice and, because they are so weakly interacting, most of the pass all the way through. Occasionally, a neutrino will interact with the ice forming a particle shower (yellow in the image below) and a cone of Askaryan radiation (very similar to Cherenkov radiation, but at radio wavelengths, not optical). These radio waves and very directional (travel along a cone) and very polarized. By measuring the radio waves deep in the ice (100 m) we are able to measure the this cone of radiation.

It is especially important to be able to measure the refractive index of the ice. The curves you see in the dotted lines in the above image are due to changes in the refractive index of the ice. If we don't understand how the ice changes with depth, we are unable to measure where the neutrino interaction happened.

So......what am I actually doing?

Measuring the refractive index of the ice.......mostly. I will also be helping retrofit existing stations with new electronics (8 are in the ice at the moment of an eventual 35), helping the drill team to move and setup their drill, and digging out snow after storms.