173 research outputs found
Lessons from the Europe\u27s greenest city
In 2007, the City of Växjö in Sweden was voted the greenest city in Europe. Over an 18-year period, greenhouse gas emissions per resident have been reduced by 41%. How has Växjö achieved this impressive result and are there any lessons that could be transferred to Australian cities? This paper describes research which compares Växjö with the Victorian City of Ballarat. The research shows that per capita emissions for Ballarat are 133% higher than those in Växjö. Upgrading the typical Ballarat home to a 6-star rating, and installing a gas-boosted solar water heater and 4.0 kW PV system on the roof could reduce per capita emissions to similar levels to those in Växjö
The AMANDA Neutrino Telescope: Principle of Operation and First Results
AMANDA is a high-energy neutrino telescope presently under construction at
the geographical South Pole. In the Antarctic summer 1995/96, an array of 80
optical modules (OMs) arranged on 4 strings (AMANDA-B4) was deployed at depths
between 1.5 and 2 km. In this paper we describe the design and performance of
the AMANDA-B4 prototype, based on data collected between February and November
1996. Monte Carlo simulations of the detector response to down-going
atmospheric muon tracks show that the global behavior of the detector is
understood. We describe the data analysis method and present first results on
atmospheric muon reconstruction and separation of neutrino candidates. The
AMANDA array was upgraded with 216 OMs on 6 new strings in 1996/97
(AMANDA-B10), and 122 additional OMs on 3 strings in 1997/98.Comment: 36 pages, 23 figures, submitted to Astroparticle Physic
Search for Point Sources of High Energy Neutrinos with AMANDA
This paper describes the search for astronomical sources of high-energy
neutrinos using the AMANDA-B10 detector, an array of 302 photomultiplier tubes,
used for the detection of Cherenkov light from upward traveling
neutrino-induced muons, buried deep in ice at the South Pole. The absolute
pointing accuracy and angular resolution were studied by using coincident
events between the AMANDA detector and two independent telescopes on the
surface, the GASP air Cherenkov telescope and the SPASE extensive air shower
array. Using data collected from April to October of 1997 (130.1 days of
livetime), a general survey of the northern hemisphere revealed no
statistically significant excess of events from any direction. The sensitivity
for a flux of muon neutrinos is based on the effective detection area for
through-going muons. Averaged over the Northern sky, the effective detection
area exceeds 10,000 m^2 for E_{mu} ~ 10 TeV. Neutrinos generated in the
atmosphere by cosmic ray interactions were used to verify the predicted
performance of the detector. For a source with a differential energy spectrum
proportional to E_{nu}^{-2} and declination larger than +40 degrees, we obtain
E^2(dN_{nu}/dE) <= 10^{-6}GeVcm^{-2}s^{-1} for an energy threshold of 10 GeV.Comment: 46 pages, 22 figures, 4 tables, submitted to Ap.
Limits to the muon flux from WIMP annihilation in the center of the Earth with the AMANDA detector
A search for nearly vertical up-going muon-neutrinos from neutralino
annihilations in the center of the Earth has been performed with the AMANDA-B10
neutrino detector. The data sample collected in 130.1 days of live-time in
1997, ~10^9 events, has been analyzed for this search. No excess over the
expected atmospheric neutrino background is oberved. An upper limit at 90%
confidence level on the annihilation rate of neutralinos in the center of the
Earth is obtained as a function of the neutralino mass in the range 100
GeV-5000 GeV, as well as the corresponding muon flux limit.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures. Version accepted for publication in Physical
Review
IceCube - the next generation neutrino telescope at the South Pole
IceCube is a large neutrino telescope of the next generation to be
constructed in the Antarctic Ice Sheet near the South Pole. We present the
conceptual design and the sensitivity of the IceCube detector to predicted
fluxes of neutrinos, both atmospheric and extra-terrestrial. A complete
simulation of the detector design has been used to study the detector's
capability to search for neutrinos from sources such as active galaxies, and
gamma-ray bursts.Comment: 8 pages, to be published with the proceedings of the XXth
International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics, Munich 200
Results from the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA)
We show new results from both the older and newer incarnations of AMANDA
(AMANDA-B10 and AMANDA-II, respectively). These results demonstrate that AMANDA
is a functioning, multipurpose detector with significant physics and
astrophysics reach. They include a new higher-statistics measurement of the
atmospheric muon neutrino flux and preliminary results from searches for a
variety of sources of ultrahigh energy neutrinos: generic point sources,
gamma-ray bursters and diffuse sources producing muons in the detector, and
diffuse sources producing electromagnetic or hadronic showers in or near the
detector.Comment: Invited talk at the XXth International Conference on Neutrino Physics
and Astrophysics (Neutrino 2002), Munich, Germany, May 25-30, 200
Muon Track Reconstruction and Data Selection Techniques in AMANDA
The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) is a high-energy
neutrino telescope operating at the geographic South Pole. It is a lattice of
photo-multiplier tubes buried deep in the polar ice between 1500m and 2000m.
The primary goal of this detector is to discover astrophysical sources of high
energy neutrinos. A high-energy muon neutrino coming through the earth from the
Northern Hemisphere can be identified by the secondary muon moving upward
through the detector. The muon tracks are reconstructed with a maximum
likelihood method. It models the arrival times and amplitudes of Cherenkov
photons registered by the photo-multipliers. This paper describes the different
methods of reconstruction, which have been successfully implemented within
AMANDA. Strategies for optimizing the reconstruction performance and rejecting
background are presented. For a typical analysis procedure the direction of
tracks are reconstructed with about 2 degree accuracy.Comment: 40 pages, 16 Postscript figures, uses elsart.st
Detection of Atmospheric Muon Neutrinos with the IceCube 9-String Detector
The IceCube neutrino detector is a cubic kilometer TeV to PeV neutrino
detector under construction at the geographic South Pole. The dominant
population of neutrinos detected in IceCube is due to meson decay in cosmic-ray
air showers. These atmospheric neutrinos are relatively well-understood and
serve as a calibration and verification tool for the new detector. In 2006, the
detector was approximately 10% completed, and we report on data acquired from
the detector in this configuration. We observe an atmospheric neutrino signal
consistent with expectations, demonstrating that the IceCube detector is
capable of identifying neutrino events. In the first 137.4 days of livetime,
234 neutrino candidates were selected with an expectation of 211 +/-
76.1(syst.) +/- 14.5(stat.) events from atmospheric neutrinos
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