 |
 |
 |
NSD ProgramsIceCubeProject Director: Robert Stokstad Project Manager & Group Leader: Spencer Klein IceCube is a neutrino telescope now under construction at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, Antarctica. When completed, it will instrument a cubic kilometer of ice at a depth extending from 1450 to 2450 meteres below the surface. The scientific goal of Icecube is to map the neutrino sky in the unexplored high-energy region above about 1 TeV. IceCube will search for neutrinos coming from point sources in the Northern Hemisphere sky, for a diffuse flux of neutrinos, and for the indications of dark-matter anihilation in the centers of the Earth and the Sun. The IceCube collaboration is international, with the NSF-funded construction project managed by the University of Wisconsin. LBNL's role in IceCube is significant. We are responsible for the design and construction of the Data Acquisition System, including the sensor that is deployed in the ice, the Digital Optical Modules. LBNL has so far built 5693 DOM 'main boards' that form the heart of the detector. In addition to the DAQ hardware and software, we designed the overall software system architecture and developed the software for experiment control. The first string of 60 DOMs was deployed in the Antarctic ice in January 2005. All 60 DOMs worked as designed. The first two neutrino candidates were found by an LBNL postdoc, using data from this string. As of January, 2008, 40 of the 80 strings in the base IceCube design have been deployed, and 98% of the DOMs are working perfectly; another 1% are usable for data-taking. The DOMs have a timing precision of better than 3 nsec, across the entire array. The LBNL group is heavily involved in both IceCube physics analysis and in developing tools for analysis - reconstruction algorithms, simulations code, and also simulated events. Our physics interests are centered on the search for extra-terrestrial electron neutrinos, the measurement of high transverse momentum muons in cosmic-ray air showers, and in the production of a neutrino 'sky-map. Our analysis software responsibilities include the simulation of the DOM main board, development and characterization of cascade (showers from electron neutrino) reconstruction algorithms and 'Level-2' processing of cascade and tau events. When completed in 2011, IceCube will have 80-86 strings in the ice and 140-160 elements in IceTop. The 6 additional strings will densely instrument a small portion of the cubic kilometer, forming a densely instrumented region which will have a considerably reduced neutrino energy threshold.
Useful quick references.
|
 |
||
|
 |