Design, performance, and analysis of a measurement of optical properties of antarctic ice below 400 nm

• Published in: Proceedings of 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference — PoS(ICRC2021)
• Main Authors: Abbasi, R., Botner, Olga, Burgman, Alexander, Glaser, Christian, Hallgren, Allan, O'Sullivan, Erin, Pérez de los Heros, Carlos, Sharma, Ankur, Valtonen-Mattila, Nora, Zhang, Z.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Högenergifysik 2022
• Subjects: Astronomy; Astrophysics and Cosmology; Astronomi; astrofysik och kosmologi; Antarctic; South Pole; Antarc*; South pole
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-518512; https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.1057

The IceCubeNeutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole, is theworld's largest neutrino telescope, instrumenting 1 km(3) of Antarctic ice with 5160 photosensors to detect Cherenkov light. For the IceCube Upgrade, to be deployed during the 2022-23 polar field season, and the enlarged detector IceCube-Gen2 several new optical sensor designs are under development. One of these optical sensors, the Wavelength-shifting Optical Module (WOM), uses wavelength-shifting and light-guiding techniques to measure Cherenkov photons in the UV range from 250 nm to 380 nm. In order to understand the potential gains from this new technology, a measurement of the scattering and absorption lengths of UV light was performed in the SPICEcore borehole at the South Pole during the winter seasons of 2018/2019 and 2019/2020. For this purpose, a calibration device with a UV light source and a detector using the wavelength shifting technology was developed. We present the design of the developed calibration device, its performance during the measurement campaigns, and the comparison of data to a Monte Carlo simulation. For complete list of authors see http://dx.doi.org/10.22323/1.395.1057