High Energy Neutrino Astronomy with IceCube

空气簇射探测器已经观测到能量高达3*10^20 eV的宇宙射线。然而，尽管几十年的工作，他们的来源仍然不明。宇宙射线是带电的，所以它们在星际磁场中弯曲，它们的轨迹不会指向它们的源头。这些宇宙射线的加速器预计也会产生中微子作为“副产品”。由于中微子的穿透力很强，而且是直线运动的，因此它们是唯一能“指向”这些源的粒子。相比之下，高能（100 TeV以上）光子会通过与星光和宇宙微波背景光子的相互作用而被吸收，无法在天文距离上存活。冰立方是一个1 km^3的中微子观测站，正在南极建造，以研究高能天体物理场所的中微子产生，并寻找超高能宇宙射线的来源。使用不同方法的通量计算发现，这种大小的探测器体积足以观察中微子源。可能的来源包括活动星系核、伽玛射线爆发和超新星遗迹。 IceCube还将研究其他粒子物理学主题：搜索地球或太阳中的弱相互作用大质量粒子（一种可能的暗物质候选者）湮灭，中微子相互作用中超对称性的特征，中微子性质的研究，以及诸如磁单极子或额外维度等奇异事物。该提案要求为LBNL IceCube小组的博士后和学生提供资金支持，以分析IceCube数据。这项工作将受益于LBNL在IceCube方面的长期经验，这使他们对硬件和软件有了深入的了解，特别是在模拟、重建、校准和数据验证方面。对地外中微子的观测将具有更广泛的意义，因为它可以找到宇宙中的加速器，从而回答国家研究理事会关于宇宙物理学的研究中提出的11个问题之一：“超高能粒子来自哪里？“该提案还包括一个教育和外联部分，将这些结果传达给学生和公众。

Air shower detectors have observed cosmic rays with energies up to 3*10^20 eV. However, despite decades of work, their sources remain unknown. Cosmic-rays are charged, so they are bent in the interstellar magnetic fields and their tracks do not point back to their source. The accelerators for these cosmic rays are also expected to produce neutrino as 'by-products'. Because they penetrate strongly and travel in straight lines, neutrinos are the only particles that will 'point back' to these sources. In contrast, high energy (above 100 TeV) photons are absorbed through their interactions with starlight and cosmic microwave background photons and do not survive over astronomical distances.IceCube is a 1 km^3 neutrino observatory being built at the South Pole to study neutrino production in high-energy astrophysical sites, and to search for the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. Flux calculations using different approaches find that a detector volume of this size is adequate to observe neutrino sources. Possible sources include active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursters, and supernova remnants. IceCube will also study other particle-physics topics: searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (a possible Dark Matter candidate) annihilation in the Earth or the Sun, for signatures of supersymmetry in neutrino interactions, studies of neutrino properties, and for exotica such as magnetic monopoles or extra dimensions. This proposal requests funding support for postdocs and students in the LBNL IceCube group to work on the analysis of IceCube data. This work will benefit from LBNL's long experience with IceCube, which has given them an intimate knowledge of the hardware and software, particularly for simulation, reconstruction, calibration and data verification. The observation of extra-terrestrial neutrinos would have broader significance, by finding the accelerators in the universe and thereby answering one of the 11 questions posed in the National Research Council study on the Physics of the Universe: "Where do ultra-high energy particles come from?" The proposal also includes an Education and Outreach component, which will communicate these results to students and the general public.