From AMANDA to IceCube

The first string of the neoteric high-energy neutrino telescope IceCube successfully began operating in January 2005. It is anticipated that, upon completion, the new detector will vastly increase the sensitivity and extend the reach of AMANDA to higher energies. A discussion of the IceCube’s discovery potential for extraterrestrial neutrinos, together with the prospects of new physics derived from the ongoing AMANDA research, will be the focus of this paper. Preliminary results of the first antarctic high-energy neutrino telescope AMANDA searching in the muon-neutrino channel for localized and diffuse excess of extraterrestrial neutrinos will be reviewed using data collected between 2000 and 2003. Neutrino flux limits obtained with the all-flavor dedicated ultrahigh energy and cascade analyses will be described. A first neutrino spectrum above 1 TeV in agreement with atmospheric neutrino flux expectations and no extraterrestrial contribution will be presented, followed by a discussion of a limit for neutralino cold dark matter candidates annihilating in the center of the Sun. on behalf of the IceCube Collaboration The text was submitted by the author in English.     

Data acquisition system for the Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope

The objective of the Baikal-GVD project is the construction of a km³-scale neutrino telescope in Lake Baikal. The Gigaton Volume Detector consists of a large three-dimensional array of photo-multiplier tubes. The first GVD-cluster has been deployed and commissioned in April 2015. The data acquisition system (DAQ) of the detector takes care of the digitization of the photo-multiplier tube signals, data transmission, filtering and storage. The design and the implementation of the data acquisition system are described.     

The Lake Baikal neutrino experiment

We review the present status of the Baikal neutrino experiment. The structure and parameters of the neutrino telescope NT-200, which was put into operation in April 1998, are described. Selected methodological results are presented. Physics results cover separating up-going muons from atmospheric neutrinos, searches for neutrino events from WIMP annihilation, searches for magnetic monopoles, and high-energy neutrinos. From Yadernaya Fizika, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2003, pp. 530–535. Original English Text Copyright ? 2003 by Balkanov, Belolaptikov, Bezrukov, Budnev, Chensky, Danilchenko, Dzhilkibaev, Domogatsky, Fialkovsky, Gaponenko, O. Gress, T. Gress, Il'yasov, Klabukov, Klimov, Klimushin, Koshechkin, Konischev, Kulepov, Kuzmichev, Kuznetsov, Lubsandorzhiev, Micheev, Milenin, Mirgazov, Moseiko, Osipova, Panfilov, Pan'kov Parfenov, Pavlov, Pliskovsky, Pokhil, Poleshuk, Popova, Prosin, Rosanov, Rubzov, Semenei, Spiering, Streicher, Tarashansky, Vasiliev, Wischnewski, Yashin, Zhukov. This article was submitted by the authors in English.     

NESTOR: An underwater neutrino observatory in the Ionian sea

Deep underwater high energy neutrino detection is a very promising field in both elementary particle physics and astrophysics. On one side, the energy range of ground based accelerators cannot be extended much more respect to the present, leaving only astronomical sources for future investigations. In the astrophysics field, neutrinos are the tool to explore further in the universe due to their low interactions. By the same token, the experimental problems for a neutrino detector are enormous. The Cherenkov effect is practically the only possible tool, because it uses sea water both as shield and as detector. NESTOR is the first step toward a full fledged deep underwater neutrino experiment. While its area, of the order of 10000 m^**2, cannot hope to identify all possible celestial sources, it is nevertheless a necessary step toward the “Km^**3” experiment. The first deployment tests have already been performed, proving the feasibility of the mechanical design, and the electronics is almost completely ready. Additional tests are scheduled for this autumn and next year will see a relevant part of the experiment installed at the bottom of the Ionian sea.     

Status and first results of the ANTARES neutrino telescope

The ANTARES detector is the most sensitive neutrino telescope observing the southern sky and the world’s first particle detector operating in the deep sea. It is installed in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of 2475 m. As example for the first results, the determination of the atmospheric muon flux is discussed; a fair agreement with previous measurements is found. Furthermore, the results of a search for high-energy events in excess of the atmospheric neutrino flux are reported and significant limits are set on the diffuse cosmic neutrino flux in the multi-TeV to PeV energy range. Using data taken during the construction phase, a first analysis searching for point-like excesses in the neutrino sky distribution has been performed. The resulting sensitivity of ANTARES is reported and compared to measurements of other detectors.     

The ANTARES neutrino project

Physics of Atomic Nuclei - The ANTARES project aims to build a deep underwater Cherenkov neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. Currently the experiment is in the construction phase and has...     

ANTARES, Physics potential, progress and status

Observational neutrino astronomy can bring information - also on particle physics - that can not be obtained in other ways. In general this concerns processes at extreme energy and distance scales. Particularly of interest are cosmic accelerators, GUT phase transition remnants and dark matter annihilation. After four years of R&D the ANTARES Collaboration begins the actual construction of a neutrino telescope to be deployed at 2400 m depth near Toulon in the Mediterranean sea. The telescope will be particularly sensitive to high-energy upward-going neutrinos. The physics case, measurements, the structure of the detector and recent progress are discussed.     

The Baikal Neutrino Telescope

We review the present status of the Baikal Neutrino Experiment and present results of a search for upward-going atmospheric neutrinos and magnetic monopoles obtained with the detector NT200. The results of a search for very high energy neutrinos are presented and an upper limit on the extraterrestrial diffuse neutrino flux is obtained. We describe the strategy of upgrading the NT200 to NT200+ and creating a detector on the Gigaton scale at Lake Baikal. The first results obtained with the new NT200+ detector as a basic cell of a future Gigaton detector are presented. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Neutrinoless double-β decay: Status and future

A brief summary of the status of neutrino masses, mixing, and oscillations is presented. Neutrinoless double β decay is considered. Predictions for the effective Majorana mass are reviewed. A possible test of the calculations of nuclear matrix elements of the 0νββ decay is proposed. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

光学天文望远镜的足迹

文章以较为轻松的笔调概述了光学天文望远镜400年的发展史.全文分7个部分,内容包括望远镜的诞生、像差和消色差透镜、传统的反射望远镜和折射望远镜、施密特望远镜的作用、当代巨型望远镜的出现、空间望远镜,以及对月基望远镜的憧憬.     

The characteristics of neutrino-nuclear reactions at <Emphasis Type="Italic">E</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">ν</Emphasis></Subscript> = 1–3 GeV

The characteristics of the charged-current neutrino—nuclear interactions are investigated for the first time at E _ν = 1–3 GeV using the data obtained with SKAT propane-freon bubble chamber irradiated in the neutrino beam at the Serpukhov accelerator. The E _ν dependence of the mean multiplicities of different types of secondary particles and their multiplicity, momentum, and angular distributions are measured. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

May heavy neutrinos solve underground and cosmic-ray puzzles?

Primordial heavy neutrinos of the fourth generation might explain different astrophysical puzzles. The simplest fourth-neutrino scenario is consistent with known fourth-neutrino physics, cosmic ray antimatter, cosmic gamma fluxes, and positive signals in underground detectors for a very narrow neutrino mass window (46–47 GeV). However, accounting for the constraint of underground experiment CDMS prohibits solution of cosmic-ray puzzles in this scenario. We have analyzed extended heavy-neutrino models related to the clumpiness of neutrino density, new interactions in heavy-neutrino annihilation, neutrino asymmetry, and neutrino decay. We found that, in these models, the cosmic-ray imprint may fit the positive underground signals in DAMA/Nal experiment in the entire mass range 46–70 GeV allowed from uncertainties of electroweak parameters, while satisfaction of the CDMS constraint reduces the mass range to around 50 GeV, where all data can come to consent in the framework of the considered hypothesis. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Limits on neutrino emission from gamma-ray bursts with the 40 string IceCube detector

IceCube has become the first neutrino telescope with a sensitivity below the TeV neutrino flux predicted from gamma-ray bursts if gamma-ray bursts are responsible for the observed cosmic-ray flux above 10(18) eV. Two separate analyses using the half-complete IceCube detector, one a dedicated search for neutrinos from pγ interactions in the prompt phase of the gamma-ray burst fireball and the other a generic search for any neutrino emission from these sources over a wide range of energies and emission times, produced no evidence for neutrino emission, excluding prevailing models at 90% confidence.     

Cosmology and neutrino properties

A brief review for particle physicists on the cosmological impact of neutrinos and on restrictions on neutrino properties from cosmology is given. The paper includes a discussion of upper bounds on neutrino mass and possible ways to relax them, methods to observe the cosmic-neutrino background, bounds on the cosmological lepton asymmetry which are strongly improved by neutrino oscillations, cosmological effects of breaking of the spin-statistics theorem for neutrinos, bounds on mixing parameters of active and possible sterile neutrinos with account of active-neutrino oscillations, bounds on right-handed currents and neutrino magnetic moments, and some more. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Masses of active neutrinos in the νMSM from x-ray astronomy

In an extension of the Standard Model by three relatively light right-handed neutrinos (the νMSM model) the role of the dark matter particle is played by the lightest sterile neutrino. We demonstrate that the observations of the extragalactic x-ray background allow us to put a strong upper bound on the mass of the lightest active neutrino and predict the absolute values of the mass of the two heavier active neutrinos in the νMSM provided that the mass of the dark matter sterile neutrino is larger than 1.8 keV. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Status of the AMANDA experiment

The AMANDA high energy neutrino telescope has successfully been increased in size from four detector strings to ten detector springs during the 1996/1997 season. The first upward going muon-neutrino candidates have been reconstructed from the 1996 year's four-string data. Three new detector strings will be deployed during 1997/1998 to 2350 metres depth.     

Large natural Cherenkov detectors: Water and ice

In this review we first address 2 questions:

• • why do we need kilometer-scale muon and neutrino detectors?

• • what do we learn from the operating Baikal and AMANDA detectors about the construction of kilometer-scale detectors?

I will subsequently discuss the challenges for building the next-generation detectors. The main message is that these are different, in fact less ominous, than for commissioning the present, relatively small, detectors which must reconstruct events far outside their instrumented volume in order to achieve large effective telescope area.     

Accelerator neutrino experiments: New results and perspectives

The current status of neutrino long-baseline accelerator experiments and new results obtained in these experiments are presented. Prospects for near-future program are also discussed. The text was submitted by the author in English.     

A large scale double beta and dark matter experiment: GENIUS

The recent results from the HEIDELBERG-MOSCOW experiment have demonstrated the large potential of double beta decay to search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. To increase by a major step the present sensitivity for double beta decay and dark matter search much bigger source strengths and much lower backgrounds are needed than used in experiments under operation at present or under construction. We present here a study of a project proposed recently [1], which would operate one ton of ‘naked’ enriched GErmanium-detectorsinliquid NItrogenas shielding in an Underground Setup (GENIUS). It improves the sensitivity to neutrino masses to 0.01 eV. A ten ton version would probe neutrino masses even down to 10^?3 eV. The first version would allow to test the atmospheric neutrino problem, the second at least part of the solar neutrino problem. Both versions would allow in addition significant contributions to testing several classes of GUT models. These are especially tests of R-parity breaking supersymmetry models, leptoquark masses and mechanism and right-handed W-boson masses comparable to LHC. The second issue of the experiment is the search for dark matter in the universe. The entire MSSM parameter space for prediction of neutralinos as dark matter particles could be covered already in a first step of the full experiment with the same purity requirements, but using only 100 kg of ⁷⁶Ge or even of natural Ge making the experiment competitive to LHC in the search for supersymmetry. The layout ofthe proposed experiment is discussed and the shielding and purity requirements are studied using GEANT Monte Carlo simulations. As a demonstration of the feasibility of the experiment first results of operating a ‘naked’ Ge detector in liquid nitrogen are presented.     

Detection of magnetic monopoles with the ANTARES detector

The ANTARES Collaboration is constructing a neutrino telescope on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The main goal of ANTARES is to detect high-energy cosmic neutrinos. The detection principle relies on the observation of Čerenkov light emitted by neutrino-induced muons. It is shown that this type of detector is also able to detect exotic particles such as magnetic monopoles. Above the Čerenkov limit, monopoles can be detected because of the emission of large amounts of direct Čerenkov light. Monopoles are also detectable below the Čerenkov limit through the production of δ rays, which in turn emit Čerenkov light. The development of a software trigger for ANTARES designed for monopole detection is presented. A simulation of the δ-ray-induced and direct Čerenkov light emission by monopoles has been made and used to study the trigger efficiency for the detection of monopoles. Techniques to suppress background at the trigger level are presented, and plans for the future are discussed. for the ANTARES Collaboration The text was submitted by the author in English.