No Arabic abstract
IceCube is currently being built deep in the glacial ice beneath the South Pole. In its second year of construction, it is already larger than its predecessor, AMANDA. AMANDA continues to collect high energy neutrino and muon data as an independent detector until it is integrated with IceCube. After introducing both detectors, recent results from AMANDA and a status report on IceCube are presented.
The detection of acoustic signals from ultra-high energy neutrino interactions is a promising method to measure the tiny flux of cosmogenic neutrinos expected on Earth. The energy threshold for this process depends strongly on the absolute noise level in the target material. The South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS), deployed in the upper part of four boreholes of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, has monitored the noise in Antarctic ice at the geographic South Pole for more than two years down to 500 m depth. The noise is very stable and Gaussian distributed. Lacking an in-situ calibration up to now, laboratory measurements have been used to estimate the absolute noise level in the 10 to 50 kHz frequency range to be smaller than 20 mPa. Using a threshold trigger, sensors of the South Pole Acoustic Test Setup registered acoustic pulse-like events in the IceCube detector volume and its vicinity. Acoustic signals from refreezing IceCube holes and from anthropogenic sources have been used to localize acoustic events. Monte Carlo simulations of sound propagating from the established sources to the SPATS sensors have allowed to check corresponding model expectations. An upper limit on the neutrino flux at energies $E_ u > 10^{11}$ GeV is derived from acoustic data taken over eight months.
We present the calculation of the atmospheric neutrino fluxes for the neutrino experiments proposed at INO, South Pole and Pyhasalmi. Neutrino fluxes have been obtained using ATMNC, a simulation code for cosmic ray in the atmosphere. Even using the same primary flux model and the interaction model, the calculated atmospheric neutrino fluxes are different for the different sites due to the geomagnetic field. The prediction of these fluxes in the present paper would be quite useful in the experimental analysis.
With construction halfway complete, IceCube is already the most sensitive neutrino telescope ever built. A rearrangement of the final holes of IceCube with increased spacing has been discussed recently to optimize the high energy sensitivity of the detector. Extending this baseline with radio and acoustic instrumentation in the same holes could further improve the high energy response. The goal would be both to detect events and to act as a pathfinder for hybrid detection, towards a possible larger hybrid array. Simulation results for such an array are presented here.
The muon flux at the South-Pole was measured for five zenith angles, $0^{circ}$, $15^{circ}$, $35^{circ}$, $82.13^{circ}$ and $85.15^{circ}$ with a scintillator muon telescope incorporating ice Cherenkov tank detectors as the absorber. We compare the measurements with other data and with calculations.
Papers submitted to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015, The Hague) by the IceCube-Gen2 Collaboration.