IceCube: The Rationale for Kilometer-Scale Neutrino Detectors
At a time when IceCube is nearing completion, we revisit the rationale for constructing kilometer-scale neutrino detectors. We focus on the prospect that such observatories reveal the still-enigmatic sources of cosmic rays. While only a “smoking gun ” is missing for the case that the Galactic compon...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.250.508 http://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.0436v1.pdf |
| Summary: | At a time when IceCube is nearing completion, we revisit the rationale for constructing kilometer-scale neutrino detectors. We focus on the prospect that such observatories reveal the still-enigmatic sources of cosmic rays. While only a “smoking gun ” is missing for the case that the Galactic component of the cosmic-ray spectrum originates in supernova remnants, the origin of the extragalactic component remains a mystery. We speculate on neutrino emission from gamma-ray bursts and active galaxies. 1. The First Kilometer-Scale, High-Energy Neutrino Detector: IceCube A series of first-generation experiments 1) have demonstrated that high-energy neutrinos with ∼ 10GeV energy and above can be detected by observing Cherenkov radiation from secondary particles produced in neutrino interactions inside large volumes of highly transparent ice or water instrumented with a lattice of photomultiplier tubes. The first second-generation detector, IceCube (see Fig. 1), is under construction at the geographic South Pole 2). Figure 1: The IceCube detector, consisting of IceCube and IceTop and the low-energy sub-detector DeepCore. Also shown is the first-generation AMANDA detector. |
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