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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 98: Neutrinoastronomie II
T 98.1: Gruppenbericht
Dienstag, 16. März 2010, 16:45–17:05, Arithmeum
IceCube in 2010: Overview — •David Boersma — III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen, D-52056 Aachen
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is under construction at the geographic South Pole since 2005 and scheduled for completion in Spring 2011. While the observatory is being installed it already takes high quality data. In its final configuration the observatory will consist of a 1 km3 deep-ice array of optical modules (IceCube) and a 1 km2 surface air shower array (IceTop). IceCube will consist of 86 strings, each with 60 digital optical modules, at depths from 1.5 to 2.5 km in the glacial ice. Eight of these strings, forming the so-called "Deep Core" sub-array, are installed in the center of the array with a denser spacing and with the DOMs all installed in the lower half of the detector. "Deep Core" enhances the sensitivity of IceCube both by lowering the energy threshold (down to about 10 GeV) and by enabling identification of neutrino events coming from the Southern hemisphere (by using the regular IceCube strings as a veto). In this presentation we will present an overview of the construction status, of the recent results from analyses performed on the data taken to date, and of ongoing developments. As the sensitivity of IceCube improves with increasing exposure, more astrophysical models (for fluxes of high energy neutrinos due to point sources, diffuse sources, GRBs, WIMP decay and other mechanisms) can be tested. In particular, in 2010 the sensitivity for high energy neutrinos will be of the same order as the so-called Waxman-Bahcall bound.