RICE is an experiment designed to detect the Cerenkov emission in the radio regime of the electromagnetic spectrum from the interaction of high energy neutrinos (greater than 100 TeV) with the antarctic ice cap. The goals of this experiment are to measure the high energy cosmic neutrino flux, determine the sources of this flux, and measure neutrino-nucleon cross sections at energies above those accessible with existing accelerators.
Although neutrinos interact very weakly with matter, the neutrino-nucleon interaction cross section increases with energy such that a PeV energy neutrino is unlikely to pass entirely through Earth without interacting. A neutrino-nucleon scattering event initiates a compact electromagnetic cascade in the ice, which produces a pulse of Cerenkov emission with power peaked at wavelengths comparable to the lateral dimensions of the cascade.
This radio emission will be detected by an array of radio receivers deployed within holes drilled deep in the antarctic ice cap. Since the radio Cerenkov intensity scales quadratically with energy, scattering is nearly absent in the 100-1000 Mhz range, and absorption lengths exceed one kilometer giving a relatively small array a sensitive volume of roughly one cubic kilometer!
Two antennas were installed successfully during the 1995-96 austral summer. During the 1996-97 season, a prototype array of several antennas was deployed down the AMANDA bore holes at depths from 140-210 meters. This prototype demonstrated the ability to successfully deploy receivers and transmitters and enabled an estimate of the noise temperature in the deep ice. Several more receivers and transmitters were deployed in three new AMANDA holes during the 1997-1998 season, in our own shallow dry holes during the 1998-99 season, and most recently in several holes drilled during the 1999-2000 season. We are now acquiring significant livetime with hopes of producing a meaningful limit on sources while learning more about the optimal design of a full scientific array.