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The Cosmic Ray Tau Neutrino Telescope (CRTNT) project, is a new experiment in the IHEP, Beijing, China.
Interacting in a mountain body as a huge target, a ultra high energy (UHE) tau neutrino generates a tau
lepton that induces an air shower by its decay products if the tau escaped from the mountain. A array
of 16 mobile fluorescence/Cerenkov light telescopes are installed behind the mountain to catch those
showers. Assuming AGNs are uniformly distributed and expanding in the universe, the event rate has
been estimated [1] to be about 10 events per year. This would be the first time for
human beings to catch neutrinos from outside of our galaxy. It would open a new window for people
to explore the universe using neutrinos, referred as the Neutrino Astronomy. Two prototype telescopes
are constructing in the CRTNT group.
Many clues indicate that Cosmic Rays in energy range of 1017 and 1018 eV(EeV) undergo a transition in
their sources and transportation. This results a bend in both the spectrum and the composition of the
primary cosmic rays. referred as "second knee" in the community. Slightly change the configuration,
the CRTNT detector is also designed to study this phenomena by precisely measuring the energy spectrum
and the composition in this range. This research will greatly enhance the exploring the unknown world
of the source, acceleration and transportation of the UHE cosmic rays.
In order keep our group closely communicating with the society, the CRTNT group maintains a
collaboration with the US NSF project High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) Experiment. The CRTNT group is
devoted to measure the extremely high energy spectrum of cosmic rays (>1018.5 eV). This is the most
important physics goal of the HiRes experiment that dedicates to study features of the highest energy
cosmic rays, such as the GZK cutoff.
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