My most recent publication is a new method for measuring the refractive index of glacial firn, the intermediate stage between snow and ice. Many experiments trying to detect ultra-high energy neutrinos take place in polar environments, because the material properties of glacial firn are nearly ideal for radio detection of netrinos. Ie is extremely dense, there are huge, high purity volumes of it, and is largely transparent to radio waves. So ice is a nearly ideal medium for these experiments trying to detect neutrinos.

However, in order to accomplish the science goals of radio neutrino detectors, a precise understanding of the ice properties is required. My paper shows that we can measure one of the more important of properties of firn (the refractive index) using equipment that is common for many of these experiments. By taking a measurement of one property of an antenna at a bunch of depths in the firn we can measure the refractive index at each depth.