Narrow Results

The Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) is a high-energy neutrino telescope operating at the geographic South Pole. It is a lattice of photo-multiplier tubes buried deep in the polar ice. The primary goal of this detector is to discover astrophysical sources of high energy neutrinos. We describe the detector methods of operation and present results from the AMANDA-B10 prototype. We demonstrate the improved sensitivity of the current AMANDA-II detector. We conclude with an outlook to the envisioned sensitivity of the future IceCube detector.

IceCube is a kilometer-scale high energy neutrino telescope under construction at the South Pole, a second-generation instrument expanding the capabilities of the AMANDA telescope. The scientific portfolio of IceCube includes the detection of neutrinos from astrophysical objects such as the sources of the cosmic rays, the search for dark matter, and fundamental physics using a very large data set of atmospheric neutrinos. The design and status of IceCube are briefly reviewed, followed by a summary of results to date from AMANDA and initial IceCube results from the 2007 run, with 22 of a planned 86 strings operational. The new infill array known as Deep Core, which will extend IceCube's capabilities to energies as low as 10 GeV, is also described.

The IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole uses 1 km³ of instrumented ice to detect both astrophysical and atmospheric neutrinos. Expanding the capabilities of the original design, the DeepCore sub-array is a low-energy extension to IceCube which will collect atmospheric neutrinos a year. The high statistics sample will allow DeepCore to make neutrino oscillation measurements at higher energies and longer baselines than current experiments. The first successful observation of neutrino induced cascades in a neutrino telescope has recently been observed in DeepCore, which upon further cultivation should help refine atmospheric neutrino flux models. Besides the fundamental neutrino physics, the low-energy reach of DeepCore, down to as low as 10 GeV, and multi-megaton effective volume will enhance indirect searches for WIMP-like dark matter. A new proposal seeking to lower the energy reach down to GeV known as the Phased IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (or PINGU) will also be described.

IceCube is a neutrino detector sensitive to energies above 10 GeV. IceCube operates by sensing the Cherenkov light from secondary particles produced in neutrino-matter interactions. One gigaton of highly transparent Antarctic ice is instrumented to achieve this goal. Designed to be modular, IceCube has been collecting data since construction began in 2005. Construction was completed in December 2010. The primary goal of IceCube is to observe astrophysical sources of neutrinos. We present here a summary of IceCube's recent results in atmospheric neutrinos, point sources, diffuse fluxes of neutrinos, cosmogenic neutrinos, a lack of correlation between neutrinos and Gamma Ray Bursts and the search for dark matter.

In this talk we present our recent Bayesian analyses of the Constrained MSSM in which the model's parameter space is constrained by the CMS α_T 1.1/fb data at the LHC, the XENON100 dark matter direct detection data, and Fermi-LAT γ-ray data from dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). We also show that the projected one-year sensitivities for annihilation-induced neutrinos from the Sun in the 86-string configuration of IceCube/DeepCore have the potential to yield additional constraining power on the parameter space of the CMSSM.

IceCube has discovered a flux of cosmic neutrinos with energies ranging from 10 TeV to 10,000 TeV. These are predominantly extragalactic in origin. The photons accompanying them represent an energy density that is similar to that of photons detected by astronomical telescopes.

In this review, we discuss recent developments in both the theory and the experimental searches of magnetic monopoles in past, current and future colliders and in the Cosmos. The theoretical models include, apart from the standard Grand Unified Theories, extensions of the Standard Model that admit magnetic monopole solutions with finite energy and masses that can be as light as a few TeV. Specifically, we discuss, among other scenarios, modified Cho–Maison monopoles and magnetic monopoles in (string-inspired, higher derivative) Born–Infeld extensions of the hypercharge sector of the Standard Model. We also outline the conditions for which effective field theories describing the interaction of monopoles with photons are valid and can be used for result interpretation in monopole production at colliders. The experimental part of the review focuses on, past and present, cosmic and collider searches, including the latest bounds on monopole masses and magnetic charges by the ATLAS and MoEDAL experiments at the LHC, as well as prospects for future searches.

The recent results of IceCube Neutrino Observatory include an excess of PeV neutrino events which appear to follow a broken power-law different from the other lower energy neutrinos detected by IceCube. The possible astrophysical source of these neutrinos is still unknown. One possible source of such neutrinos could be the decay of nonthermal, long-lived heavy mass dark matter, whose mass should be $>10^6$ GeV and could have produced at the very early Universe. They can undergo cascading decay via both hadronic and leptonic channels to finally produce such high energy neutrinos. This possibility has been explored in this work by studying the decay flux of these dark matter candidates. The mass and lifetime of such dark matter particles have been obtained by performing a ${\chi }^2$ fit with the PeV neutrino data of IceCube. We finally estimate the baryon asymmetry produced in the Universe due to such dark matter decay.

With their narrow emission window gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are among the most promising objects for the first identification of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. If a considerable fraction of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays is indeed produced in GRBs, IceCube, which is now more than half-way completed, should be able to detect the associated neutrinos in the next few years. Furthermore, optical follow-up observations of neutrino multiplets will enhance IceCube's sensitivity to choked GRBs which do not produce a gamma-ray signal.

Point source searches with neutrino telescopes like IceCube are normally restricted to one hemisphere, due to the selection of up-going events as a way of rejecting the atmospheric muon background. In this work we show that the down-going region above the horizon can be included in the search by suppressing the background through energy-sensitive selection procedures. This approach increases the reach to the EeV regime of the signal spectrum, which was previously not accessible due to the absorption of neutrinos with energies above a PeV inside the Earth. We present preliminary results of this analysis, which for the first time includes up-going as well as down-going muon events in a combined approach. We used data collected with IceCube in a configuration of 22 strings. No significant excess above the atmospheric background is observed. While other analyses provided results for the Northern hemisphere, this new approach extends the field of view to a large part of the southern sky, which was previously not covered with IceCube.

This contribution is a brief report on the IceCube kilometer cubed neutrino telescope located at the geographical South Pole. IceCube construction is on schedule to be completed in 2011. The full detector will consist of 86 strings, each with 60 digital optical modules. At the time of writing 59 strings of IceCube are taking data. Based on the data taken to date, the telescope meets its design goals. Selected results of ongoing analysis of IceCube detector data are presented.

By transforming a cubic kilometer of natural Antarctic ice into a neutrino detector, the IceCube project created the opportunity to observe cosmic neutrinos. We describe the experiment and the complementary methods presently used to study the flux of the recently discovered cosmic neutrinos. In one method, events are selected in which neutrinos interacted inside the instrumented volume of the detector, yielding a sample of events dominated by neutrinos of electron and tau flavor. Alternatively, another method detects secondary muons produced by neutrinos selected for having traveled through the Earth to reach the detector, providing a pure sample of muon neutrinos. We will summarize the results obtained with the enlarged data set collected since the initial discovery and appraise the current status of high-energy neutrino astronomy. The large extragalactic neutrino flux observed points to a nonthermal universe with comparable energy in neutrinos, gamma rays and cosmic rays. Continued observations may be closing in on the source candidates. In this context, we highlight the potential of multimessenger analyses as well as the compelling case for constructing a next-generation detector larger in volume by one order of magnitude.

IceCube has observed several PeV neutrino events whose astrophysical origin has not been identified. In this proceeding, we discuss heavy decaying dark matter may be responsible for these neutrinos. Dark matter $\chi$ is constructed to communicate with standard model particles through the neutrino-portal interaction. We calculate both total and differential decay width for the dominant three-body decay of dark matter and show that to fit the data, the required mass is around ${𝒪}$(10 PeV) and lifetime is about $10^{28}$s.

IceCube is a kilometer scale high-energy neutrino observatory, currently under construction at the South Pole. It is a photo-detector, using the deep Antarctic ice as detection medium for the Cherenkov photons induced by relativistic charged particles. These charged particles may be atmospheric muons or reaction products from neutrino interactions in the vicinity of the instrumented volume. The experiment searches for neutrinos originating in astrophysical sources, and can also detect neutrinos from WIMP interaction in the Sun or Earth. In the last two austral summers, 9 in-ice strings and 16 surface IceTop stations (out of up to 80 planned) were successfully deployed, and the detector has been taking data ever since. In this proceedings, IceCube design, present status, performance and dark matter detection sensitivities will be discussed.

The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) has been taking data since 2000 and its data acquisition system was upgraded in January 2003 to read out the complete digitized waveforms from the buried Photo-multipliers (PMTs) using Transient Waveform Recorders (TWR). This system currently runs in parallel with the standard AMANDA data acquisition system. Once AMANDA is incorporated into the 1 km³ detector IceCube, only the TWR system will be kept. We report results from a first atmospheric neutrino analysis on data collected in 2003 with TWR. Good agreement in event rate and angular distribution verify the performance of the TWR system. A search of the northern hemisphere for localized event clusters shows no statistically significant excess, thus a flux limit is calculated, which is in full agreement with previous results based on the standard AMANDA data acquisition system. We also update the status of a search for diffusely distributed neutrinos with ultra high energy (UHE) using data collected by the TWR system.

IceCube is a high energy (E ≳ TeV) neutrino telescope currently under construction at the South Pole. The final instrumented volume will be approximately 1 km³ and the complementing surface array (IceTop) will be 1 km² in area. The main objective of IceCube is the search for extraterrestrial sources of high energy neutrinos. IceCube's prototype detector (AMANDA) produced data sets starting in 1997. These have been analyzed in the search for high-energy neutrinos from diffuse and point sources. AMANDA has also performed searches for Dark Matter accumulated in the center of the Earth and the Sun and for relativistic magnetic monopoles. This papers reports the implications of the AMANDA searches and reports on the status of IceCube construction.

By transforming a cubic kilometer of natural Antarctic ice into a neutrino detector, the IceCube project created the opportunity to observe cosmic neutrinos. We describe the experiment and the complementary methods presently used to study the flux of the recently discovered cosmic neutrinos. In one method, events are selected in which neutrinos interacted inside the instrumented volume of the detector, yielding a sample of events dominated by neutrinos of electron and tau flavor. Alternatively, another method detects secondary muons produced by neutrinos selected for having traveled through the Earth to reach the detector, providing a pure sample of muon neutrinos. We will summarize the results obtained with the enlarged data set collected since the initial discovery and appraise the current status of high-energy neutrino astronomy. The large extragalactic neutrino flux observed points to a nonthermal universe with comparable energy in neutrinos, gamma rays and cosmic rays. Continued observations may be closing in on the source candidates. In this context, we highlight the potential of multimessenger analyses as well as the compelling case for constructing a next-generation detector larger in volume by one order of magnitude.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole, is designed to detect high-energy neutrinos from galactic and extragalactic sources. Results from searches for high-energy neutrinos are presented here, including the first detection of a diffuse flux of high-energy neutrinos of extraterrestrial origin with energies between about 30 TeV and 2 PeV. The latest results based on the four-year data set, with a livetime of 1347 days, are shown. In this sample, 54 neutrino candidate events were found. In addition, the analysis of approximately 35,000 muon neutrinos from the Northern sky, extracted from data taken during 659.5 days of live-time is presented. Finally, the future plans to improve the IceCube facility with both high and low energy arrays are discussed.

The quest to understand the nature dark matter is one of the most relevant ones in Particle Physics nowadays, since it constitutes most of the matter of the Universe and it is still unknown what it is made of. In order to answer to this question, a multi-front attack is needed because our knowledge of its properties is very incomplete. Among the different experimental strategies, neutrino telescopes are very relevant tools. There are several promising sources to look at: the Sun, the Galactic Center, the Earth, dwarf galaxies, galaxy clusters… As an example of the power of neutrino telescopes, we can mention the analysis of the Sun, which offers the best sensitivity for spin dependent WIMP-nucleon scattering and is free of alternative astrophysical interpretations. In this talk I will review the status and prospects of the main present and future neutrino telescopes: ANTARES, IceCube and KM3NeT.

IceCube is a neutrino telescope currently under construction at the geographical S. Pole. It will be a cubic kilometer size by 2011 when complete. So far IceCube has been successful in both deploying strings and taking data with its partial detector together with its predecessor, AMANDA. Its performance was well verified as it was originally designed. Here we present some interesting recent results from IceCube and AMANDA: point source search, GRB080319B, indirect dark matter search, magnetic monopole search and search for violation of Lorentz invariance. The IceCube deep core which will consist of 6 special strings is expected to improve low energy physics of IceCube such as indirect dark matter search.