Status and prospects of the IceCube neutrino telescope
E. Resconi
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8 pages, 10 pictures, proceeding of the International Workshop on a Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescope for the Mediterranean Sea VLVnT08 - Toulon, Var, France, 22-24 April 2008
The IceCube neutrino observatory, under construction at the South Pole, consists of three sub-detectors: a km-scale array of digital optical modules deployed deep in the ice, the AMANDA neutrino telescope and the surface array IceTop. We summarize results from searches for cosmic neutrinos with the AMANDA telescope and review expected sensitivities for IceCube at various installation phases. Reliability and robustness of installation at the South Pole has been demonstrated during the past four successful construction seasons. The 40 installed IceCube strings are working well. We are developing detailed plans for the final construction of IceCube, including extensions optimized for low and high energy. We describe the IceCube Deep Core project which will extend the low energy response of IceCube.
IceCube is a cubic kilometer-scale neutrino telescope under construction at the South Pole since the austral summer 2004/2005. At the moment it is taking data with 22 deployed strings. The full detector is expected to be completed in 2011 with up to 80 strings each holding 60 digital optical modules. The progenitor detector AMANDA has been operating at the same site since 1997 and is still running as an integral part of IceCube. A summary of AMANDA science for its 10 years of standalone operations is presented, as well as the status and first physics results of the IceCube project.
IceCube is a kilometer-scale high energy neutrino detector that builds on the wealth of experience accumulated with its smaller predecessor, AMANDA. An international collaboration has begun construction of key components of the IceCube detector and deployment operations at the South Pole will begin in late 2004. The underlying design of the IceCube detector and of the DAQ system are presented here, emphasizing the digital optical modules (DOMs) as the smallest discrete IceCube building block. The event reconstruction critically relies on a relative timing accuracy from DOM to DOM of a few nano…
IceCube is a kilometer scale neutrino observatory now in construction at the South Pole. The construction started in January 2005 with the deployment of 76 sensors on the first string and four surface detector stations. Nine strings and 32 surface detectors are in operation since February 2006. The data based on calibration measurements, muons and artificial light flashes are consistent with performance expectations. This report focuses on design, construction experience and first data from the sensors deployed in January 2005.
We report on the current construction status of the IceCube high energy neutrino observatory and possible future construction plans. With the completion of the fourth construction season in Feb. 2008, the observatory is now instrumenting half a cubic kilometer of ice, greatly increasing the horizon for high energy neutrino detection. We briefly describe physics topics related to cosmology, such as indirect searches for supersymmetric cold dark matter, for slow and relativistic magnetic monopoles, GZK neutrinos and violation of Lorentz invariance or Equivalence Principle. It is anticipated that…
IceCube is a cubic neutrino telescope under construction at the South Pole since the austral summer 2004/2005 with a total instrumented volume of the order of 1 km^3. At the moment it is taking data with 40 deployed strings. The full detector is expected to be completed in 2011 with up to 80 strings holding 60 digital optical modules (DOMs) each. The progenitor detector AMANDA has been operating at the same site since 1997 and is still functioning as a means to enhance neutrino effective area at energies below 100 GeV. A summary of science results and status of the project is presented.
The primary motivation for building neutrino telescopes is to open the road for neutrino astronomy, and to offer another observational window for the study of cosmic ray origins. Other physics topics, such as the search for WIMPs, can also be developed with neutrino telescope. As of March 2008, the IceCube detector, with half of its strings deployed, is the world largest neutrino telescope taking data to date and it will reach its completion in 2011. Data taken with the growing detector are being analyzed. The results of some of these works are summarized here. AMANDA has been successfully int…
We quantitatively address whether IceCube, a kilometer-scale neutrino detector under construction at the South Pole, can observe neutrinos pointing back at the accelerators of the Galactic cosmic rays. The photon flux from candidate sources identified by the Milagro detector in a survey of the TeV sky is consistent with the flux expected from a typical cosmic-ray generating supernova remnant interacting with the interstellar medium. We show here that IceCube can provide incontrovertible evidence of cosmic-ray acceleration in these sources by detecting neutrinos. We find that the signal is opti…
High-energy neutrinos are uniquely suited to study a large variety of physics as they traverse the universe almost untouched, in contrast to conventional astronomical messengers like photons or cosmic rays which are limited by interactions with radiation and matter at high energies or deflected by ambient magnetic fields. Located at the South Pole, IceCube combined with its predecessor AMANDA comprise the world's largest neutrino telescope. IceCube currently consists of nine strings, each containing 60 digital optical modules, deployed at depths of 1.5 to 2.5km in the ice and an array of 16 su…
IceCube is a 1 km3 neutrino telescope currently under construction at the South Pole. The detector will consist of 4800 optical sensors deployed at depths between 1450 m and 2450 m in clear Antarctic ice evenly distributed over 80 strings. An air shower array covering a surface area of 1 km^2 above the in-ice detector will measure cosmic ray air showers in the energy range from 300 TeV to above 1 EeV. The detector is designed to detect neutrinos of all flavors. With 40 strings currently in operation, construction is 50% complete. Based on data taken to date, the observatory meets its design go…
The year 2008 has witnessed remarkable steps in developing high energy neutrino telescopes. IceCube at the South Pole has been deployed with 40 of its planned 80 strings and reached half a cubic kilometer instrumented volume, in the Mediterranean Sea the "first-stage" neutrino telescope ANTARES has been completed and takes data with 12 strings. The next years will be key years for opening the neutrino window to the high energy universe. IceCube is presently entering a region with realistic discovery potential. Early discoveries (or non-discoveries) with IceCube will strongly influence the desi…
This article gives a brief overview of the status of attempts to constrain inflation using observations, and examines prospects for future developments.
Search for ultra high-energy neutrino induced reactions, as part of a comprehensive probe of the neutrino sky and also investigation of the particle nature of the dark matter, with unique sensitivity to cold dark matter particles are described. We present a description of the design, scientific motivation and goals, performance and status of the IceCube experiment.
We discuss results of the AMANDA neutrino telescope, in operation at the South Pole since 2000, and present the status and scientific potential of its km$^3$ extension, IceCube.
This talk review status and results from the two presently operating underwater/ice neutrino telescopes, NT-200 in Lake Baikal and Amanda-II at the South Pole. It also gives a description of the design and the expected performance of Icecube, the next-generation neutrino telescope at South Pole.
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Since the end of the 2005-2006 austral summer, the IceCube detector consists of an array of 9 strings, deployed between 1450 m and 2450 m of depth and containing 540 digital optical sensors and 16 IceTop surface stations with 64 sensors. With the integrated AMANDA-II experiment this is the world's largest neutrino telescope in operation. The construction status of IceCube is presented along with an update on physics performance study for the detection of high energy neutrinos. The potential of the full km^3-scale telescope in the search for astrophysical sources is also addressed.
In this paper we describe the performance of the 9 instrumented IceCube strings and 16 surface IceTop stations taking data at the Geographical South Pole after 2 deployment seasons. We will focus on the description of the array and on the construction and data analysis status. The expected full array performance is discussed and compared to other results for the relevant physics studies using high energy neutrinos for astrophysical neutrino searches.
The study of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization is still in a pioneering stage, but promises to bring a huge advancement in cosmology in the near future, just as high-accuracy observations of the anisotropies in the total intensity of the CMB revolutionized our understanding of the universe in the past few years. In this contribution, we outline the scientific case for observing CMB polarization, and review the current observational status and future experimental prospects in the field.
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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a project to definitively map $π$ steradians of the local Universe. An array of CCD detectors used in drift-scan mode will digitally image the sky in five passbands to a limiting magnitude of $r' \sim 23$. Selected from the imaging survey, $10^6$ galaxies and $10^5$ quasars will be observed spectroscopically. I describe the current status of the survey, which is due to begin observations early in 1997, and its prospects for constraining models for dark matter in the Universe.
The success of the AMANDA neutrino telescope has shown that the ice sheet at the geographical South Pole is a suitable medium for optical Cherenkov detection of high energy neutrino interactions. Several thousands of atmospheric neutrinos have been recorded by AMANDA and the sensitivity for cosmic neutrinos has continuously improved. So far no cosmic neutrino signals have been detected. The deployment of the much larger and more sensitive IceCube neutrino observatory has started and nine out of 80 strings have been installed. This paper summarizes some of the results obtained by the AMANDA tel…
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IceCube is a kilometer scale high-energy neutrino observatory, currently under construction at the South Pole. It is a photo-detector, using the deep Antarctic ice as detection medium for the Cherenkov photons induced by relativistic charged particles. These charged particles may be atmospheric muons or reaction products from neutrino interactions in the vicinity of the instrumented volume. The experiment searches for neutrinos originating in astrophysical sources, and can also detect neutrinos from WIMP interaction in the Sun or Earth. In the last two austral summers, 9 in-ice strings and 16 …
While VLBI experiments at 3mm are nowadays fairly standard, VLBI at 1mm still is technically difficult. Here we summarize the results from previous VLBI pilot experiments at 1.3mm. These included antennas at IRAM (Pico Veleta, Plateau de Bure) and more recently the Heinrich Hertz telescope on Mt. Graham, Arizona.
The IceCube experiment at South Pole consists of two detector components - the IceTop air shower array on the surface and the neutrino telescope at depths from 1450 m to 2450 m below. Currently, 26 IceTop stations and 22 InIce strings are deployed. With the present size of the IceTop array, it is possible to measure cosmic rays with energies ranging from 0.5 to 100 PeV. Coincident events between the IceTop and the InIce detector provide useful cross-checks of the detector performance and furthermore make it possible to study the cosmic-ray composition. This paper gives an overview on the curre…
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The last years have been an exciting period for the field of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) research. With recent CMB balloon-borne and ground-based experiments we are entering a new era of 'precision' cosmology that enables us to use the CMB anisotropy measurements to constrain the cosmological parameters and test new theoretical scenarios.
In cores of supernovae and crusts of neutron stars, nuclei can adopt interesting shapes, such as rods or slabs, etc., which are referred to as nuclear "pasta." In recent years, we have studied the pasta phases focusing on their dynamical aspects with a quantum molecular dynamic (QMD) approach. In this article, we review these works. We also focus on the treatment of the Coulomb interaction.
Neutrino oscillations can be affected by decoherence induced e.g. by Planck scale suppressed interactions with the space-time foam predicted in some approaches to quantum gravity. We study the prospects for observing such effects at IceCube, using the likely flux of TeV antineutrinos from the Cygnus spiral arm. We formulate the statistical analysis for evaluating the sensitivity to quantum decoherence in the presence of the background from atmospheric neutrinos, as well as from plausible cosmic neutrino sources. We demonstrate that IceCube will improve the sensitivity to decoherence effects of…
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