0000000000295286
AUTHOR
Joakim Edsjö
Observation of high-energy neutrinos using Cerenkov detectors embedded deep in Antarctic ice.
Neutrinos are elementary particles that carry no electric charge and have little mass. As they interact only weakly with other particles, they can penetrate enormous amounts of matter, and therefore have the potential to directly convey astrophysical information from the edge of the Universe and from deep inside the most cataclysmic high-energy regions. The neutrino's great penetrating power, however, also makes this particle difficult to detect. Underground detectors have observed low-energy neutrinos from the Sun and a nearby supernova2, as well as neutrinos generated in the Earth's atmosphere. But the very low fluxes of high-energy neutrinos from cosmic sources can be observed only by mu…
Physics results from the Amanda neutrino detector
In the winter season of 2000, the AMANDA (Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array) detector was completed to its final state. We report on major physics results obtained from the AMANDA-B10 detector, as well as initial results of the full AMANDA-II detector.
RECENT RESULTS FROM AMANDA
We present results based on data taken in 1997 with the 302-PMT Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array-B10 ("AMANDA-B10") array. Atmospheric neutrinos created in the northern hemisphere are observed indirectly through their charged current interactions which produce relativistic, Cherenkov-light-emitting upgoing muons in the South Pole ice cap. The reconstructed angular distribution of these events is in good agreement with expectation and demonstrates the viability of this ice-based device as a neutrino telescope.
Observation of high energy atmospheric neutrinos with the Antarctic muon and neutrino detector array
The Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) began collecting data with ten strings in 1997. Results from the first year of operation are presented. Neutrinos coming through the Earth from the Northern Hemisphere are identified by secondary muons moving upward through the array. Cosmic rays in the atmosphere generate a background of downward moving muons, which are about 10^6 times more abundant than the upward moving muons. Over 130 days of exposure, we observed a total of about 300 neutrino events. In the same period, a background of 1.05*10^9 cosmic ray muon events was recorded. The observed neutrino flux is consistent with atmospheric neutrino predictions. Monte Carlo simulat…
Status of the neutrino telescope AMANDA: Monopoles and WIMPs
The neutrino telescope AMANDA has been set up at the geographical South Pole as first step to a neutrino telescope of the scale of one cubic kilometer, which is the canonical size for a detector sensitive to neutrinos from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) and Topological Defects (TD). The location and depth in which the detector is installed is given by the requirement to detect neutrinos by the Cherenkov light produced by their reaction products and to keep the background due to atmospheric muons as small as possible. However, a detector optimized for this purpose is also capable to detect the bright Cherenkov light from relativistic Monopoles and neutrino signals from …
Search for Supernova Neutrino-Bursts with the AMANDA Detector
The core collapse of a massive star in the Milky Way will produce a neutrino burst, intense enough to be detected by existing underground detectors. The AMANDA neutrino telescope located deep in the South Pole ice can detect MeV neutrinos by a collective rate increase in all photo-multipliers on top of dark noise. The main source of light comes from positrons produced in the CC-reaction of anti-electron neutrinos on free protons $\antinue + p \to e^+ + n$. This paper describes the first supernova search performed on the full sets of data taken during 1997 and 1998 (215 days of live time) with 302 of the detector's optical modules. No candidate events resulted from this search. The performan…