Efficiently Extracting Energy from Cosmological Neutrinos
  Detecting the extremely low-energy neutrinos that form the Cosmic Neutrino
Background (CNB) presents many experimental challenges, but pursuing this
elusive goal is still worthwhile because these weakly-interacting particles
could provide a new window into the structure and composition of the early
universe. This report examines whether cosmological neutrinos can deposit
sufficient energy into a target system to be detectable with plausible
extensions of current bolometric technologies. While the macroscopic
wavelengths of cosmological neutrinos can greatly enhance their cross sections
with dense targets, such interactions can only be detectable if they transfer a
significant fraction of each neutrino's kinetic energy into the detector
system. We find that a large array of dense target masses coupled to suitable
motion-sensitive circuits could potentially satisfy both of these conditions
and thus might be able to serve as the basis for a more practical cosmological
neutrino detector.
