Sensitivity of BEACON to Point Sources of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrinos

The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is a novel detector concept designed to measure the tau neutrino flux above 100 PeV. BEACON consists of multiple radio interferometers placed on mountaintops which search for the radio emission of upgoing extensive air showers created when tau neutrinos skim the Earth. Each interferometer consists of O(10) low cost, dual-polarized dipole antennas operating in a phased array, which allows for lower trigger thresholds and the directional rejection of noise. A full-scale BEACON will consist of O(1000) independent antenna arrays and is predicted to be sensitive to the diffuse flux of cosmogenic neutrinos. A Monte Carlo simulation utilizing models of air shower radio emission and the BEACON antennas was developed to predict the sensitivity of BEACON to point sources of tau neutrinos. Any number and configuration of BEACON stations can be simulated. Here, we present the predicted point source sensitivity of a 1,000 station BEACON and compare it to the expected fluence from different possible neutrino sources.