The ANTARES project

The ANTARES deep-sea neutrino telescope will be located at a depth of 2400 m in the Mediterranean Sea. Deployment of the detector will commence this Autumn and is expected to be completed by the end of 2004. With a surface area of the order of 0.1 km^2 it will be one of the largest European detectors. The aim of neutrino telescopes is to detect high-energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources whilst also providing information on the early Universe. Successful operation of ANTARES in a deep sea environment constitutes an important milestone towards the ultimate goal of the construction of an underwater neutrino telescope at the cubic-kilometre scale. The sky coverage of astrophysical sources offered by a Mediterranean neutrino telescope is complementary to any similar device at the South Pole. The current status of the project is discussed and the expected performance of the detector is described in the context of the scientific programme of the project which comprises astrophysical studies, dark matter searches and neutrino oscillations.Comment: Submitted to ICHEP02 Conference, 31st Int. Conf. on High Energy Physics, 24-31 July 2002, Amsterdam. LaTeX, 10 pages, 9 figure

Testing Quantum Gravity via Cosmogenic Neutrino Oscillations

Implications of some proposed theories of quantum gravity for neutrino flavor oscillations are explored within the context of modified dispersion relations of special relativity. In particular, approximate expressions for Planck-scale-induced deviations from the standard oscillation length are obtained as functions of neutrino mass, energy, and propagation distance. Grounding on these expressions, it is pointed out that, in general, even those deviations that are suppressed by the second power of the Planck energy may be observable for ultra-high-energy neutrinos, provided they originate at cosmological distances. In fact, for neutrinos in the highest energy range of EeV to ZeV, deviations that are suppressed by as much as the seventh power of the Planck energy may become observable. Accordingly, realistic possibilities of experimentally verifying these deviations by means of the next generation neutrino detectors--such as IceCube and ANITA--are investigated.Comment: 8 pages, RevTeX4; Essentially the published versio

Status report of the ANTARES project

The ANTARES project aims at the construction of an underwater neutrino telescope at the scale of 0.1 km^2 2400 m deep in the Mediterranean Sea. After a 4-year R&D program, the ANTARES project has entered the construction phase which will be concluded by the end of 2004. The current status of the project is reported.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. to appear in Proc. of TAUP2001 conference, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Sept. 200

An exploration of hadronic interactions in blazars using IceCube

Context: Hadronic models, involving matter (proton or nuclei) acceleration in blazar jets, imply high energy photon and neutrino emissions due to interactions of high-energy protons with matter and/or radiation in the source environment. Aims: This paper shows that the sensitivity of the IceCube neutrino telescope in its 40-string configuration (IC-40) is already at the level of constraining the parameter space of purely hadronic scenarios of activity of blazars. Methods: Assuming that the entire source power originates from hadronic interactions, and assuming that the models describe the data, we estimate the expected neutrino flux from blazars based on the observed gamma-ray flux by Fermi, simultaneously with IC-40 observations. We consider two cases separately to keep the number of constrainable parameters at an acceptable level: proton-proton or proton-gamma interactions are dominant. Comparing the IC-40 sensitivity to the neutrino flux expected from some of the brightest blazars, we constrain model parameters characterizing the parent high-energy proton spectrum. Results: We find that when pp interactions dominate, some constraints on the primary proton spectrum can be imposed. For instance, for the tightest constrained source 3C 454.3, the very high energy part of the spectra of blazars is constrained to be harder than E^-2 with cut-off energies in the range of Ecut >10^18 eV. When interactions of high-energy protons on soft photon fields dominate, we can find similarly tight constraints on the proton spectrum parameters. [abridged]Comment: accepted for publication in A&