Title: Neutrino Astronomy at the South Pole: From AMANDA to IceCube
Abstract:
Doing astronomy with neutrinos is a dream that originated with their
discovery in the nineteen fifties. The possibilities seem unlimited:
searching for the most violent processes in the universe such as
those associated with quasars and gamma ray bursts, searching for
dark matter trapped in the sun or studying the behavior of the
highest energy neutrinos for the telltale signatures of additional
dimensions of space. The problem has been to develop a robust and
affordable technology to build the kilometer-scale neutrino detectors
required to do the science. The AMANDA telescope using clear deep
Antarctic ice as a Cherenkov detector of muons and showers initiated
by neutrinos of all 3 flavors, has met this challenge. We will review
the results obtained with more than 5000 well-reconstructed neutrinos
in the 50 GeV~500 TeV energy range collected during its first 4 years
of operation. More importantly, we will show that AMANDA represents
a proof of concept for the ultimate kilometer-scale neutrino observatory,
IceCube, now under construction.
Send comments to
Marcela Carena and Bogdan Dobrescu.
