SYNCA: A Synthetic Cyclotron Antenna for the Project 8 Collaboration
Abstract
Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) is a technique for measuring the kinetic energy of charged particles through a precision measurement of the frequency of the cyclotron radiation generated by the particle's motion in a magnetic field. The Project 8 collaboration is developing a next-generation neutrino mass measurement experiment based on CRES. One approach is to use a phased antenna array, which surrounds a volume of tritium gas, to detect and measure the cyclotron radiation of the resulting -decay electrons. To validate the feasibility of this method, Project 8 has designed a test stand to benchmark the performance of an antenna array at reconstructing signals that mimic those of genuine CRES events. To generate synthetic CRES events, a novel probe antenna has been developed, which emits radiation with characteristics similar to the cyclotron radiation produced by charged particles in magnetic fields. This paper outlines the design, construction, and characterization of this Synthetic Cyclotron Antenna (SYNCA). Furthermore, we perform a series of measurements that use the SYNCA to test the position reconstruction capabilities of the digital beamforming reconstruction technique. We find that the SYNCA produces radiation with characteristics closely matching those expected for cyclotron radiation and reproduces experimentally the phenomenology of digital beamforming simulations of true CRES signals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2212.08026,
title = {SYNCA: A Synthetic Cyclotron Antenna for the Project 8 Collaboration},
author = {A. Ashtari Esfahani and S. Böser and N. Buzinsky and M. C. Carmona-Benitez and C. Claessens and L. de Viveiros and M. Fertl and J. A. Formaggio and L. Gladstone and M. Grando and J. Hartse and K. M. Heeger and X. Huyan and A. M. Jones and K. Kazkaz and M. Li and A. Lindman and C. Matthé and R. Mohiuddin and B. Monreal and R. Mueller and J. A. Nikkel and E. Novitski and N. S. Oblath and J. I. Peña and W. Pettus and R. Reimann and R. G. H. Robertson and L. Saldaña and P. L. Slocum and J. Stachurska and Y. -H. Sun and P. T. Surukuchi and A. B. Telles and F. Thomas and M. Thomas and L. A. Thorne and T. Thümmler and L. Tvrznikova and W. Van De Pontseele and B. A. VanDevender and T. E. Weiss and T. Wendler and E. Zayas and A. Ziegler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.08026},
year = {2025}
}