Search for exotic neutrino sources with the KM3NeT telescope
The neutrino represents the ideal astronomical messenger. Neutrinos travel large distances without absorption and with no deflection by magnetic fields. Having a very small mass and no electric charge, the neutrino is similar to the photon as an astronomical messenger, except for the fact that it in...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | Italian English |
| Published: |
2018
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| Online Access: | http://www.fedoa.unina.it/12592/ http://www.fedoa.unina.it/12592/1/PhD_Thesis_RMele.pdf |
| Summary: | The neutrino represents the ideal astronomical messenger. Neutrinos travel large distances without absorption and with no deflection by magnetic fields. Having a very small mass and no electric charge, the neutrino is similar to the photon as an astronomical messenger, except for the fact that it interacts on weakly with the matter. For this reason, high energy neutrinos may reach us unscathed from cosmic distances revealing the proprieties of their sources. On the other hand, their weak interactions also make cosmic neutrinos very difficult to detect. In 1960, Markov suggested to detect high energy neutrinos using huge volumes of transparent natural material such as ice or water. High energy astrophysical neutrinos would weakly interact with one of the nucleons of the medium producing charged particle that emit Cherenkov photons which can be detected by a lattice of photomultipliers. The charged produced particles have almost the same direction of the generating neutrino and this allows to point back to the neutrino sources if the muon direction can be precisely reconstructed. The low cross section of the neutrino interactions and the very low predicted astrophysical neutrino flows suggest that these Cherenkov detectors should be very large, on the scale of km3. The ANTARES neutrino telescope, a three dimensional array of photomultipliers distributed over 12 lines, installed in the Mediterranean was completed in May 2008. It is taking data continuously since then. The main goal of the telescope is the search for high energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources. Its position in the Northern hemisphere and the possibility to look at the Galactic Centre has made it especially useful since it is complementary to the IceCube Antarctic telescope. This complementary view can provide a different insight in the cosmic signal observed only by the IceCube Collaboration. The encouraging results obtained by ANTARES and IceCube during their data taking, the importance of synergy between neutrino telescopes in two different ... |
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