Orateur
Description
The Hybrid Elevated Radio Observatory for Neutrinos, or HERON, is a proposed detector concept for ultrahigh energy (E > 100 PeV) neutrinos. HERON consists of 24 compact phased radio arrays embedded within a larger sparse array of 360 standalone antennas, deployed along the side of a ~100 km mountain range in Argentina. Due to the high elevation observation sites and the long propagation length of radio, HERON achieves a very large instantaneous effective area towards the horizon, as well as a deep sensitivity thanks to phasing. The excellent pointing resolution provided by the sparse array will make HERON well suited for the detection and localization of astrophysical transient events, paving the way for ultra-high-energy neutrino astronomy. As part of the global multi-messenger network, HERON could both exploit real-time alerts from brokers such as Astro-COLIBRI to perform targeted searches and issue neutrino alerts to trigger follow-up observations across complementary observatories. Here, we present the HERON concept and outline a first multi-messenger observational strategy for its operation. We estimate the angular resolution required to associate transient ultra-high-energy neutrino events with their astrophysical sources, based on population models and external alert networks, focusing on candidate source classes such as gamma-ray bursts. We further evaluate the expected number of potential sources within HERON’s instantaneous field of view to inform detector design and optimization.