276 research outputs found
High-Energy Neutrino Astronomy: A Glimpse of the Promised Land
In 2012, physicists and astronomers celebrated the hundredth anniversary of
the detection of cosmic rays by Viktor Hess. One year later, in 2013, there was
first evidence for extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos, i.e. for signal
which may contain key information on the origin of cosmic rays. That evidence
is provided by data taken with the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South
Pole. First concepts to build a detector of this kind have been discussed at
the 1973 International Cosmic Ray Conference. Nobody would have guessed at that
time that the march towards first discoveries would take forty years, the
biblical time of the march from Egypt to Palestine. But now, after all, the
year 2013 has provided us a first glimpse to the promised land of the neutrino
universe at highest energies. This article sketches the evolution towards
detectors with a realistic discovery potential, describes the recent relevant
results obtained with the IceCube and ANTARES neutrino telescopes and tries a
look into the future.Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures. Talk given at the session of the Russian
Academy of Science dedicated to Bruno Pontecorvo, Dubna, Sept. 201
High-Energy Neutrino Astronomy: where do we stand, where do we go?
With the identification of a diffuse flux of astrophysical ("cosmic")
neutrinos in the TeV-PeV energy range, IceCube has opened a new window to the
Universe. However, the corresponding cosmic landscape is still uncharted: so
far, the observed flux does not show any clear association with known source
classes. In the present talk, I sketch the way from Baikal-NT200 to IceCube and
summarize IceCube's recent astrophysics results. Finally, I describe the
present projects to build even larger detectors: GVD in Lake Baikal, KM3NeT in
the Mediterranean Sea and IceCube-Gen2 at the South Pole. These detectors will
allow studying the high-energy neutrino sky in much more detail than the
present arrays permit.Comment: Talk given at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Baksan
Laborator
Cherenkov Detectors in Astroparticle Physics
Cherenkov techniques are widely used in astroparticle experiments. This
article reviews the various detection principles and the corresponding
experiments, including some of the physics breakthroughs. In particular, it
traces the development since the mid of the 1990s, a period when the field took
a particularly dynamic development.Comment: Talk given at the XI International Workshop on Ring Imaging Cherenkov
Detectors, Edinburgh Sept. 202
The HiSCORE concept for gamma-ray and cosmic-ray astrophysics beyond 10\,TeV
Air-shower measurements in the primary energy range beyond 10 TeV can be used
to address important questions of astroparticle and particle physics. The most
prominent among these questions are the search for the origin of charged
Galactic cosmic rays and the so-far little understood transition from Galactic
to extra-galactic cosmic rays. A very promising avenue towards answering these
fundamental questions is the construction of an air-shower detector with
sufficient sensitivity for gamma-rays to identify the accelerators and large
exposure to achieve accurate spectroscopy of local cosmic rays. With the new
ground-based large-area (up to 100 square-km) wide-angle (Omega ~ 0.6-0.85 sr)
air-shower detector concept HiSCORE (Hundred*i Square-km Cosmic ORigin
Explorer), we aim at exploring the cosmic ray and gamma-ray sky
(accelerator-sky) in the energy range from few 10s of TeV to 1 EeV using the
non-imaging air-Cherenkov detection technique. The full detector simulation is
presented here. The resulting sensitivity of a HiSCORE-type detector to
gamma-rays will extend the energy range so far accessed by other experiments
beyond energies of 50 - 100 TeV, thereby opening up the ultra high energy
gamma-ray (UHE gamma-rays, E > 10 TeV) observation window.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures, accepted by Astroparticle Physics, DOI
information: 10.1016/j.astropartphys.2014.03.00
Neutrino Astrophysics in the cold: Amanda, Baikal and 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.Comment: Talk given at the Nobel Symposium on Neutrino Physics, Haga Slott,
Sweden, 2004, 14 pages, 10 figure
Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data
A search for high-energy neutrinos interacting within the IceCube detector
between 2010 and 2012 provided the first evidence for a high-energy neutrino
flux of extraterrestrial origin. Results from an analysis using the same
methods with a third year (2012-2013) of data from the complete IceCube
detector are consistent with the previously reported astrophysical flux in the
100 TeV - PeV range at the level of per flavor and reject a
purely atmospheric explanation for the combined 3-year data at .
The data are consistent with expectations for equal fluxes of all three
neutrino flavors and with isotropic arrival directions, suggesting either
numerous or spatially extended sources. The three-year dataset, with a livetime
of 988 days, contains a total of 37 neutrino candidate events with deposited
energies ranging from 30 to 2000 TeV. The 2000 TeV event is the highest-energy
neutrino interaction ever observed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by PRL. The event catalog, event
displays, and other data tables are included after the final page of the
article. Changed from the initial submission to reflect referee comments,
expanding the section on atmospheric backgrounds, and fixes offsets of up to
0.9 seconds in reported event times. Address correspondence to: J. Feintzeig,
C. Kopper, N. Whitehor
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