IceCube-DeepCore is a compact Cherenkov detector located in the clear ice of the bottom center of the IceCube Neutrino Telescope. Its purpose is to enhance the sensitivity of IceCube for low neutrino energies (< 1 TeV) and to lower the detection threshold of IceCube by about an order of magnitude to below 10 GeV. The detector is formed by 6 additional strings of 360 high quantum efficiency phototubes together with the 7 central IceCube strings. The improved sensitivity will provide an enhanced sensitivity to probe a range of parameters of dark matter models not covered by direct experiments. It opens a new window for atmospheric neutrino oscillation measurements of muon neutrino disappearance or tau neutrino appearance in an energy region not well tested by previous experiments, and enlarges the field of view of IceCube to a full sky observation when searching for potential neutrino sources. The first string was succesfully installed in January 2009, commissioning of the full detector is planned early 2010.
The IceCube neutrino observatory in operation at the South Pole, Antarctica, comprises three distinct components: a large buried array for ultrahigh energy neutrino detection, a surface air shower array, and a new buried component called DeepCore. DeepCore was designed to lower the IceCube neutrino energy threshold by over an order of magnitude, to energies as low as about 10 GeV. DeepCore is situated primarily 2100 m below the surface of the icecap at the South Pole, at the bottom center of the existing IceCube array, and began taking physics data in May 2010. Its location takes advantage of …
Atmospheric neutrino oscillations with DeepCore; Supernova detection with IceCube and beyond; Study of South Pole ice transparency with IceCube flashers; Submitted papers to the 32nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Beijing 2011.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, completed in December 2010 and located at the geographic South Pole, is the largest neutrino telescope in the world. IceCube includes the more densely instrumented DeepCore subarray, which increases IceCube's sensitivity at neutrino energies down to 10 GeV. DeepCore has recently demonstrated sensitivity to muon neutrino disappearance from atmospheric neutrino oscillation. A further extension is under consideration, the Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU) which would lower the energy threshold below about 10 GeV. In particular, PINGU would be sens…
The IceCube detector, located at the South Pole, is discussed as a detector for core collapse supernovae. The large flux of $\barν_{e}$ from a Galactic supernova gives rise to Cherenkov light from positrons and electrons created in neutrino interactions which increase the overall count rate of the photomultipliers significantly. We will give an overview of the standard, count rate based, method for supernova detection and present the development of a novel technique. This technique uses coincident hits to extract additional information such as the average energy and spectral features. The pote…
Measurements of neutrinos at and below 10 GeV provide unique constraints of neutrino oscillation parameters as well as probes of potential Non-Standard Interactions (NSI). The IceCube Neutrino Observatory's DeepCore array is designed to detect neutrinos down to GeV energies. IceCube has built the world's largest data set of neutrinos >10 GeV, making searches for NSI a computational challenge. This work describes the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to improve the energy reconstruction resolution and speed of reconstructing O(10 GeV) neutrino events in IceCube. Compared to current li…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located under 1.4 km of Antarctic ice, instruments a cubic kilometer of ice with 5,160 optical modules that detect Cherenkov radiation originating from neutrino interactions. The more densely instrumented center, DeepCore, aims to detect atmospheric neutrinos at 10-GeV scales to improve important measurements of fundamental neutrino properties such as the oscillation parameters and to search for non-standard interactions. Sensitivity to oscillation parameters, dependent on the distance traveled over the neutrino energy (L/E), is limited in IceCube by the resol…
Current generation neutrino telescopes cover an energy range from about 10 GeV to beyond $10^9$ GeV. IceCube sets the scale for future experiments to make improvements. Strategies for future upgrades will be discussed in three energy ranges. At the low-energy end, an infill detector to IceCube's DeepCore would add sensitivity in the energy range from a few to a few tens of GeV with the primary goal of measuring the neutrino mass hierarchy. In the central energy range of classical optical neutrino telescopes, next generation detectors are being pursued in the Mediterranean and at Lake Baikal. T…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a kilometer-scale detector currently under construction at the South Pole. The full detector will comprise 5,160 photomultipliers (PMTs) deployed on 86 strings from 1.45-2.45 km deep within the ice. As of the austral summer of 2009-10, 73 out of the total number strings have been deployed, and the detector is reaching its final construction phase. A dense sub-array of 6 strings in the center of the detector (DeepCore) has been already installed for enhancing the sensitivity to low energy neutrinos. The IceCube de- tection principle is based on the measuremen…
IceAct is a proposed surface array of compact (50 cm diameter) and cost-effective Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes installed at the site of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the geographic South Pole. Since January 2019, two IceAct telescope demonstrators, featuring 61 silicon pho- tomultiplier (SiPM) pixels have been taking data in the center of the IceTop surface array during the austral winter. We present the first analysis of hybrid cosmic ray events detected by the IceAct imaging air-Cherenkov telescopes in coincidence with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, includ- ing the IceTop surfac…
The next generation of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, IceCube-Gen2, will constitute a much larger detector, increasing the rate of high-energy neutrinos. IceCube-Gen2 will address the long-standing questions about astrophysical accelerators. The experiment will also include a surface air-shower detector which will allow for measurements of cosmic rays in the energy region where a transition between Galactic and extragalactic accelerators is expected. As a baseline design for the surface detector, we consider a surface array above the optical in-ice array consisting of the same type of stati…
An upgrade of the present IceCube surface array (IceTop) with scintillation detectors and possibly radio antennas is foreseen. The enhanced array will calibrate the impact of snow accumulation on the reconstruction of cosmic-ray showers detected by IceTop as well as improve the veto capabilities of the surface array. In addition, such a hybrid surface array of radio antennas, scintillators and Cherenkov tanks will enable a number of complementary science targets for IceCube such as enhanced accuracy to mass composition of cosmic rays, search for PeV photons from the Galactic Center, or more th…
IceAct is a proposed surface array of cost effective and compact Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) based small-size (50 cm) Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes above the IceCube in-ice detector. In coincidence with the in-ice and surface components of IceCube it forms a hybrid detector that enables new measurements combining the information from the Cherenkov light image, the surface particle footprint and the in-ice muon tracks of extensive air showers. During January 2019, two new versions of the IceAct telescope demonstrators featuring 61 SiPM pixels and improved optics were installed in the cen…
The neutrino mass hierarchy is one of the few remaining unknown parameters in the neutrino sector and hence a primary focus of the experimental community. The Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU) experiment, to be co-located with the IceCube DeepCore detector in the deep Antarctic glacier, is being designed to provide a first definitive measurement of the mass hierarchy. We have conducted feasibility studies for the detector design that demonstrate a statistically-limited sensitivity to the hierarchy of 2.1 sigma to 3.4 sigma per year is possible, depending on the detector geometr…
Following the first observation of an astrophysical high-energy neutrino flux with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in 2013 and the identification of a first cosmic high-energy neutrino source in 2017, the detector will be upgraded with about 700 new advanced optical sensors. This will expand IceCube's capabilities both at low and high neutrino energies. A large fraction of the upgrade modules will be multi-PMT Digital Optical Modules, mDOMs, each featuring 24 three-inch class photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) pointing uniformly in all directions, thereby providing an almost homogeneous angular cov…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole is a multi-component particle detector consisting of the IceTop surface array and the deep in-ice IceCube array. The foreseen enhancement of the surface instrumentation will consist of plastic scintillator panels read out by silicon photomultipliers. This additional detector component will calibrate the effect of snow accumulation on the IceTop tanks, improve the measurement of cosmic rays, and enhance the atmospheric background rejection for the high-energy astrophysical neutrino detection. Two scintillator prototype stations were deployed at…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory will be upgraded with about 700 additional optical sensor modules and new calibration devices. Particularly, improved calibration will enhance IceCube's physics capabilities both at low and high neutrino energies. An important ingredient for a good angular resolution of the observatory is a precise calibration of the positions of optical sensors. We present the concept of newly developed acoustic sensors that are mounted inside the optical modules and additional acoustic emitter modules that are attached to the strings. With this system we aim for the calibrati…
IceTop, the surface array of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, consists of 162 ice-Cherenkov tanks distributed over an area of 1km$^2$. Besides being used as a veto for the in-ice neutrino detector, IceTop is a powerful cosmic-ray detector. In the upcoming years, the capabilities of the IceTop array will be enhanced by augmenting the existing ice-Cherenkov tanks with an array of elevated scintillator panels and radio antennas. Combining the data obtained from the different detectors will improve the reconstruction of cosmic-ray energy and primary mass while reducing the energy threshold and in…
The reconstruction of event-level information, such as the direction or energy of a neutrino interacting in IceCube DeepCore, is a crucial ingredient to many physics analyses. Algorithms to extract this high level information from the detector's raw data have been successfully developed and used for high energy events. In this work, we address unique challenges associated with the reconstruction of lower energy events in the range of a few to hundreds of GeV and present two separate, state-of-the-art algorithms. One algorithm focuses on the fast directional reconstruction of events based on un…
The IceCube Upgrade is the first step towards the next-generation neutrino observatory at the South Pole, IceCube-Gen2, and will be installed in the central region of the existing array. The Upgrade will consist of 693 newly developed, densely spaced optical sensors and 50 standalone calibration devices, which will enhance IceCube's capabilities both at low and high neutrino energies. Of the new sensors, 402 will be multi-PMT Digital Optical Modules (mDOMs). Consisting of 24 small photomultipliers arranged inside a pressure vessel, the mDOM features a large sensitive area distributed nearly ho…
The current supernova detection technique used in IceCube relies on the sudden deviation of the summed photomultiplier noise rate from its nominal value during the neutrino burst, making IceCube a $\approx 3$ Megaton effective detection volume - class supernova detector. While galactic supernovae can be resolved with this technique, the supernova neutrino emission spectrum remains unconstrained and thus presents a limited potential for the topics related to supernova core collapse models. The paper elaborates analytically on the capabilities of IceCube to detect supernovae through the analysis…
The proposed ARIANNA-200 neutrino detector, located at sea-level on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica, consists of 200 autonomous and independent detector stations separated by 1 kilometer in a uniform triangular mesh, and serves as a pathfinder mission for the future IceCube-Gen2 project. The primary science mission of ARIANNA-200 is to search for sources of neutrinos with energies greater than 10^17 eV, complementing the reach of IceCube. An ARIANNA observation of a neutrino source would provide strong insight into the enigmatic sources of cosmic rays. ARIANNA observes the radio emission from h…
