I will discuss the motivations for Neutrino Astronomy and its prospects given the current experimental scenario, which is the main focus of this paper. I will also go through the first results of the IceCube detector deep in the ice and of the ANTARES undersea telescope underlying complementary aspects, common and different challenges. It is an exciting time for this science since the first completed undersea detector is successfully taking data and the first cubic kilometer detector is going to be shortly more than half-way from its completion in Antarctica.
This paper addresses the working principle of neutrino telescopes, important detector parameters as well as the layout and performance of current and future neutrino telescopes. It was prepared for the book "Probing Particle Physics with Neutrino Telescopes", C.~P{é}rez de los Heros, editor, 2020 (World Scientific) in 2018.
The ANTARES Neutrino Telescope was completed in May 2008 and is the first operational Neutrino Telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The main purpose of the detector is to perform neutrino astronomy and the apparatus also offers facilities for marine and Earth sciences. This paper describes the design, the construction and the installation of the telescope in the deep sea, offshore from Toulon in France. An illustration of the detector performance is given.
The origin of cosmic rays is still one of the unresolved questions in modern physics. Violent and high energetic explosions of γ-ray emission known as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are perhaps one of the main candidates of sources of hadron acceleration and therefore of neutrino emission. Neutrino telescopes search for signatures of cosmic neutrinos such as an excess of neutrinos in time and space coincidence with a GRB. These searches use catalogues of GRBs by satellite experiments. The online catalog presented here is a useful tool that provides a reference catalog of GRBs for neutrino telescopes …
We report on a simulation study of the calibration potential offered by floating Extensive Air Shower (EAS) detector stations (HELYCON), operating in coincidence with the KM3NeT Mediterranean deep-sea neutrino telescope. We describe strategies in order to investigate for possible systematic errors in reconstructing the direction of energetic muons as well as to determine the absolute position of the underwater detector.
We propose the operation of floating Extensive Air Shower (EAS) detector stations in coincidence with the KM3NeT Mediterranean deep-sea neutrino telescope to determine the absolute position and orientation of the underwater detector and to investigate possible systematic angular errors. We evaluate the accuracy of the proposed calibration strategies using a detailed simulation of the EAS and KM3NeT detectors.
This paper investigates the potential to detect tau neutrinos in the energy range of 1-1000 PeV searching for very inclined showers with imaging Cherenkov telescopes. A neutrino induced tau lepton escaping from the Earth may decay and initiate an air shower which can be detected by a fluorescence or Cherenkov telescope. We present here a study of the detection potential of Earth-skimming neutrinos taking into account neutrino interactions in the Earth crust, local matter distributions at various detector sites, the development of tau-induced showers in air and the detection of Cherenkov photon…
This paper investigates the potential to detect tau neutrinos in the energy range of 1-1000 PeV searching for very inclined showers with imaging Cherenkov telescopes. A neutrino induced tau lepton escaping from the Earth may decay and initiate an air shower which can be detected by a fluorescence or Cherenkov telescope. We present here a study of the detection potential of Earth-skimming neutrinos taking into account neutrino interactions in the Earth crust, local matter distributions at various detector sites, the development of tau-induced showers in air and the detection of Cherenkov photon…
ANTARES is a neutrino telescope under the Mediterranean Sea, in a site 40 km off the French coast at a depth of 2475 m. It is an array of 12 lines equipped with 884 photomultipliers. The detection mechanism relies on the observation of the Cherenkov light emitted by charged leptons produced by neutrinos interacting in the water and ground surrounding the detector. First studies of the detector performances and preliminary results on reconstruction of atmospheric muons and neutrinos are presented, with the expected sensitivity for a diffuse flux of high energy neutrinos.
We study the potential of a very large volume underwater Mediterranean neutrino telescope to observe neutrinos from supernova (SN) explosions within our galaxy. The intense neutrino burst emitted in a SN explosion results in a large number of MeV neutrinos inside the instrumented volume of the neutrino telescope that can be detected (mainly) via the reaction ν_e-bar + p -> e^+ + n . In this study we simulated the response of the underwater neutrino telescope to the electron antineutrino flux predicted by the Garching model for SN explosions. We assumed that the neutrino telescope comprises 616…
The ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope is located in the Mediterranean Sea about 40 km from Toulon at a depth of 2475 m. In its 12 line configuration it has almost 900 photomultipliers in 275 "floors". The performance of the detector is discussed and several results are presented, including the measurements of downgoing muons, search for a diffuse flux of high energy muon neutrinos, search for cosmic point sources of neutrinos, search for fast magnetic monopoles, etc. A short discussion is also made on Earth and Sea Science studies with a neutrino telescope.
We report on the evaluation of the performance of a Mediterranean very large volume neutrino telescope. We present results of our studies concerning the capability of the telescope in detecting/discovering galactic (steady point sources) and extragalactic, transient (Gamma Ray Bursts) high energy neutrino sources as well as measuring ultra high energy diffuse neutrino fluxes. The neutrino effective area and angular resolution are presented as a function of the neutrino energy, and the background event rate (atmospheric neutrinos and muons) is estimated. The discovery potential of the neutrino …
We report on the development of search methods for point-like and extended neutrino sources, utilizing the tracking and energy estimation capabilities of an underwater, Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescope (VLVnT). We demonstrate that the developed techniques offer a significant improvement on the telescope's discovery potential. We also present results on the potential of the Mediterranean KM3NeT to discover galactic neutrino sources.
Cherenkov telescopes could have the capability of detecting high energy tau neutrinos by searching for very inclined showers. If a tau lepton, produced by a tau neutrino, escapes from the Earth crust, it will decay and initiate an air shower which can be detected by a fluorescence/Cherenkov telescope. Here we present a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of event rates induced by tau neutrinos in the energy range from 1 PeV to 1 EeV. Topographic conditions are taken into account for a set of example locations. As expected, we find a neutrino sensitivity which depends on the shape of the energy spe…
Cherenkov telescopes have the capability of detecting high energy tau neutrinos in the energy range of 1--1000 PeV by searching for very inclined showers. If a tau lepton, produced by a tau neutrino, escapes from the Earth or a mountain, it will decay and initiate a shower in the air which can be detected by an air shower fluorescence or Cherenkov telescope. In this paper, we present detailed Monte Carlo simulations of corresponding event rates for the VERITAS and two proposed Cherenkov Telescope Array sites: Meteor Crater and Yavapai Ranch, which use representative AGN neutrino flux models an…
The ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope is located in the Mediterranean Sea about 40 km from Toulon at a depth of 2475 m. In its 12 line configuration it has almost 900 photomultipliers in 295 floors. The performance of the detector is discussed and several results are presented, including the measurements of downgoing muons, atmospheric neutrinos, search for a diffuse flux of high energy muon neutrinos, search for cosmic point sources of neutrinos, multi messenger astronomy, searches for fast magnetic monopoles and slow nuclearites. A short discussion is also made on Earth and Sea Science s…
Baikal-GVD is a km$^3$-scale neutrino telescope being constructed in Lake Baikal. Muon and partially tau (anti)neutrino interactions near the detector through the W$^{\pm}$-boson exchange are accompanied by muon tracks. Reconstructed direction of the track is arguably the most precise probe of the neutrino direction attainable in Cerenkov neutrino telescopes. Muon reconstruction techniques adopted by Baikal-GVD are discussed in the present report. Performance of the muon reconstruction is studied using realistic Monte Carlo simulation of the detector. The algorithms are applied to real data fr…
Tau neutrinos with energies in the PeV-EeV range produce up-going extensive air showers (UEAS) if they interact underground close enough to the surface of the Earth. This work studies detectability of the UEAS with a system of fluorescence telescopes overlooking dark, low reflectivity, area on the ground up to the distances 20-30 km from mountain top(s). Such system could provide sensitivity sufficient for accumulation of the astrophysical neutrino signal statistics at the rate ten(s) events per year in the energy range beyond 10 PeV, thus allowing to extend the energy frontier of neutrino ast…
The gSeaGen code is a GENIE based application to generate neutrino-induced events in an underwater neutrino detector. The gSeaGen code is able to generate events induced by all neutrino flavours, taking into account topological differences between track-type and shower-like events. The neutrino interaction is simulated taking into account the density and the composition of the media surrounding the detector. The main features of gSeaGen will be presented together with some examples of its application within ANTARES and KM3NeT.
Completed in May 2008, the ANTARES neutrino telescope is located in the Mediterranean Sea, 40 km off the coast of Toulon, at a depth of about 2500 m. Consisting of 12 detector lines housing nearly 900 optical modules, the ANTARES telescope is currently the largest neutrino detector in the northern hemisphere. Utilising the Mediterranean Sea as a detecting medium, the detection principle of ANTARES relies on the observation of Cherenkov photons emitted by charged relativistic leptons, produced through neutrino interactions with the surrounding water and seabed, using a 3 dimensional lattice of …
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has revealed the existence of sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. However, identification of the sources is challenging because astrophysical neutrinos are difficult to separate from the background of atmospheric neutrinos produced in cosmic-ray-induced particle cascades in the atmosphere. The efficient detection of air showers in coincidence with detected neutrinos can greatly reduce those backgrounds and increase the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes. Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) are sensitive to gamma-ray-induced (and cosmic-ray-indu…
Neutrinos with energies in the PeV to EeV range produce upgoing extensive air showers when they interact underground close enough to the surface of the Earth. We study the possibility for detection of such showers with a system of very wide field-of-view imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, named CHANT for CHerenkov from Astrophysical Neutrinos Telescope, pointing down to a strip below the Earth's horizon from space. We find that CHANT provides sufficient sensitivity for the study of the astrophysical neutrino flux in a wide energy range, from 10 PeV to 10 EeV. A space-based CHANT system …
On May 2008 the ANTARES collaboration completed the installation of a neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. This detector consists of a tridimensional array of almost 900 photomultipliers (PMTs) distributed in 12 lines. These PMTs can collect the Cherenkov light emitted by the muons produced in the interaction of high energy cosmic neutrinos with the matter surrounding the detector. A good timing resolution is crucial in order to infer the neutrino track direction and to make astronomy. In this presentation I describe the time calibration systems of the ANTARES detector including some m…
Cosmic neutrinos are unique probes of the high energy universe. IceCube has discovered a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux since 2013, but their origin remains elusive. The potential sources could include, for example, active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts and star burst galaxies. To resolve those scenarios, higher statistics and better angular resolution of astrophysical neutrinos are needed. An optical module with larger photon collection area and more precise timing resolution in a next generation neutrino telescope could help. Silicon photon multipliers (SiPMs), with high quantum effi…
The Moon is used as a target volume for ultra-high energy neutrino searches with terrestrial radio telescopes. The LUNASKA project has conducted observations with the Parkes and ATCA telescopes; and, most recently, with both of them in combination. We present an analysis of the data obtained from these searches, including validation and calibration results for the Parkes-ATCA experiment, as well as a summary of prospects for future observations.
Completed in May 2008, the ANTARES neutrino telescope is located 40 km off the coast of Toulon, at a depth of about 2500 m. The telescope consists of 12 detect or lines housing a total of 884 optical modules. Each line is anchored to the seabed and pulled taught by the buoyancy of the individual optical modules and a top buoy. Due to the fluid nature of the sea-water detecting medium and the flexible nature of the detector lines, the optical modules of the ANTARES telescope can suffer from deviations of up to several meters from the vertical and as such, real time positioning is needed. Real t…
KM3NeT is a deep-sea research infrastructure being constructed in the Mediterranean Sea. It will host the next generation Cherenkov neutrino telescope and nodes for a deep sea multidisciplinary observatory, providing oceanographers, marine biologists, and geophysicists with real time measurements. The neutrino telescope will complement IceCube in its field of view and exceed it substantially in sensitivity. Its main goal is the detection of high energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin. The detector will have a modular structure with six building blocks, each consisting of about one hundred De…
At about 40 km off the coast of Toulon (France), anchored at 2475 m deep in the Mediterranean Sea, there is ANTARES: the first undersea neutrino telescope and the only one currently operating. The detector consists of 885 photomultiplier tubes arranged into 12 strings of 450-metres high, with the aim to detect the Cherenkov light induced by the charged superluminal interaction products of neutrinos. Its main scientific target is the search for high-energy (TeV and beyond) neutrinos from cosmic accelerators, as predicted by hadronic interaction models, and the measurement of the cosmic neutrino…
