Drilling deep in South Pole Ice

To detect the tiny flux of ultra-high energy neutrinos from active galactic nuclei or from interactions of highest energy cosmic rays with the microwave background photons needs target masses of the order of several hundred cubic kilometers. Clear Antarctic ice has been discussed as a favorable material for hybrid detection of optical, radio and acoustic signals from ultra-high energy neutrino interactions. To apply these technologies at the adequate scale hundreds of holes have to be drilled in the ice down to depths of about 2500 m to deploy the corresponding sensors. To do this on a reasonable time scale is impossible with presently available tools. Remote drilling and deployment schemes have to be developed to make such a detector design reality. After a short discussion of the status of modern hot water drilling we present here a design of an autonomous melting probe, tested 50 years ago to reach a depth of about 1000 m in Greenland ice. A scenario how to build such a probe today with modern technologies is sketched. A first application of such probes could be the deployment of calibration equipment at any required position in the ice, to study its optical, radio and acoustic transmission properties.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, contribution to the Workshop ARENA2014, June 9-12 2014, Annapoli

Fiber technology applications for a future e+e- linear collider detector

The advantages and possibilities of fiber technology for the detection of particles in 500 GeV e+e- reactions are considered. It is suggested to build a fast trigger which could be used also for intermediate tracking. A fiber preshower in front of the electromagnetic calorimeter would allow to identify electrons and photons with a space precision better than 0.1 mm.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures. Contributed to Workshop on Scintillating Fiber Detectors (SCIFI97), Notre Dame, IN, 2-6 Nov 199

Introducing TAXI: a Transportable Array for eXtremely large area Instrumentation studies

A common challenge in many experiments in high-energy astroparticle physics is the need for sparse instrumentation in areas of 100 km2 and above, often in remote and harsh environments. All these arrays have similar requirements for read-out and communication, power generation and distribution, and synchronization. Within the TAXI project we are developing a transportable, modular four-station test-array that allows us to study different approaches to solve the aforementioned problems in the laboratory and in the field. Well-defined interfaces will provide easy interchange of the components to be tested and easy transport and setup will allow in-situ testing at different sites. Every station consists of three well-understood 1 m2 scintillation detectors with nanosecond time resolution, which provide an air shower trigger. An additional sensor, currently a radio antenna for air shower detection in the 100 MHz band, is connected for testing and calibration purposes. We introduce the TAXI project and report the status and performance of the first TAXI station deployed at the Zeuthen site of DESY.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, presented at ARENA 2014, Annapolis, MD, June 201

Alternative Detection Methods for Highest Energy Neutrinos

Several experimental techniques are currently under development, to measure the expected tiny fluxes of highest energy neutrinos above 10**18 eV. Projects in different stages of realisation are discussed here, which are based on optical and radio as well as acoustic detectors. For the detection of neutrino events in this energy range a combination of different detector concepts in one experiment seems to be most promising.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Nuclear Physics B (Proceedings Supplement): Proceedings of the XXIst International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics, Paris, June 14-19, 200

An effective method to read out large scintillator areas with precise timing

Using scintillator tile technology several square meters of plastic scintillator are read out by only two photomultiplier with a time precision of about 1.5 nsec. Two examples are discussed to build a detector based on this technology to search for cosmic muons and neutrinos.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures. Contributed to Workshop on Scintillating Fiber Detectors (SCIFI97), Notre Dame, IN, 2-6 Nov 199

Simulation of a Hybrid Optical/Radio/Acoustic Extension to IceCube for EeV Neutrino Detection

Astrophysical neutrinos at $\sim$EeV energies promise to be an interesting source for astrophysics and particle physics. Detecting the predicted cosmogenic (``GZK'') neutrinos at 10$^{16}$ - 10$^{20}$ eV would test models of cosmic ray production at these energies and probe particle physics at $\sim$100 TeV center-of-mass energy. While IceCube could detect $\sim$1 GZK event per year, it is necessary to detect 10 or more events per year in order to study temporal, angular, and spectral distributions. The IceCube observatory may be able to achieve such event rates with an extension including optical, radio, and acoustic receivers. We present results from simulating such a hybrid detector.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the 29th ICRC, Pune, Indi

Testrun results from prototype fiber detectors for high rate particle tracking

A fiber detector concept has been realized allowing to registrate particles within less than 100 nsec with a space point precision of about 0.1 mm at low occupancy. Three full size prototypes have been build by different producers and tested at a 3 GeV electron beam at DESY. After 3 m of light guides 8-10 photoelectrons were registrated by multichannel photomultipliers providing an efficiency of more than 99%. Using all available data a resolution of 0.086 mm was measured.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figure