Acoustic properties of the South Pole ice for astrophysical neutrino detection
Over the last few decades, several dedicated neutrino telescopes have been built to detect high energy astrophysical neutrinos which are predicted from a variety of astrophysical objects. Since the neutrino flux is predicted to be very low (about 1 per km² per year), the IceCube detector could detec...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Ghent University. Faculty of Sciences
2012
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| Online Access: | https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/2978327 http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-2978327 https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/2978327/file/4336076 |
| Summary: | Over the last few decades, several dedicated neutrino telescopes have been built to detect high energy astrophysical neutrinos which are predicted from a variety of astrophysical objects. Since the neutrino flux is predicted to be very low (about 1 per km² per year), the IceCube detector could detect only about 1 event per year. A detector with an effective volume of the order of 100 km³ is needed to detect a few events per year. Acoustic and radio methods can, in principle, be used to instrument a large hybrid neutrino telescope with a good sensitivity at a reasonable cost. The South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS) is the only acoustic activity to study the acoustic detection in ice so far. The acoustic attenuation length of the Antarctic ice is a fundamental quantity to design a future acoustic neutrino detector at the South Pole. The longitudinal waves in the South Pole ice are expected to be attenuated via absorption and scattering, where the attenuation due to scattering depends on the frequency (~f^4). In this work, recent measurements from SPATS was used to investigate the frequency dependence of sound in the South Pole ice. This will allow us to distinguish between the two different attenuation mechanisms (absorption or scattering.) Further analysis related to the sound speed frequency dependence and the ice fabric of the South Pole was done. The in-situ measured attenuation length was used to perform a detailed simulation of neutrino-induced cascades and the resulting acoustic signal in ice. Further simulations were done to investigate the feasibility of a large neutrino telescope in ice. |
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