The AMANDA Project: The Antarctic Ice Sheet as a High Energy Particle Detector

南极μ子和中微子探测器阵列（AMANDA）项目将在南极南极冰盖约一公里深的地方嵌入敏感的光电倍增管，利用冰层本身作为切伦科夫探测器，探测穿过地球的天体物理来源的高能中微子。此外，AMANDA将对北极附近大气中产生的中微子非常敏感，可以用来测量中微子的性质。迄今为止，中微子天文学仅限于探测太阳中微子和1987年2月出现在大麦哲伦星云的一颗超新星的短暂爆发。最近，康普顿天文台卫星发现了几个新的高能伽马射线源，也可能是中微子源，最重要的是，亚利桑那州霍普金斯山上的大气切伦科夫望远镜发现了许多可探测的中微子源，这些中微子源不能被伽马射线或任何其他波长的电磁辐射探测到。因为有物质介入。直到现在，建造中微子望远镜在技术上才变得可行，而作为第一代这样的仪器之一，阿曼达有望为观测天文学的一个新分支做出巨大贡献。

The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) project will imbed sensitive photomultiplier tubes about one kilometer deep in the Antarctic ice sheet at South Pole to use the ice itself as a Cherenkov detector for high energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin which have passed through the Earth. Additionally, AMANDA will be sensitive to neutrinos which are produced in the atmosphere near the north pole and can be used to make measurements of neutrino properties. Neutrino astronomy has, to date, been limited to detection of solar neutrinos and one brief burst from a supernova which appeared in the Large Magellanic Cloud in February 1987. Very recently several new sources of high energy gamma rays, which may also be neutrino sources, have been discovered by the Compton Observatory satellite and, most significantly, the atmospheric Cherenkov telescope on Mt. Hopkins, AZ. There should also be many detectable neutrino sources which are not detectable by gamma rays, or any other wavelength of electromagnetic radiation, because of intervening matter. Only just now is it becoming technically feasible to build neutrino telescopes and as one of the first generation of such instruments, AMANDA promises to be a large contributor to a new branch of observational astronomy.