High Energy Neutrino Astronomy with IceCube

气淋探测器已经观测到能量高达3*10^20 eV的宇宙射线。然而，尽管经过数十年的研究，它们的来源仍然未知。宇宙射线是带电的，所以它们在星际磁场中会弯曲，它们的轨迹不会指向它们的源头。这些宇宙射线的加速器也有望产生中微子作为“副产品”。因为中微子的穿透力很强，并且沿直线运动，所以中微子是唯一能够“指向”这些源的粒子。相比之下，高能光子（超过100 TeV）通过与星光和宇宙微波背景光子的相互作用被吸收，并且不能在天文距离上存活。冰立方是一个1平方公里的中微子天文台，正在南极建造，用于研究高能天体物理场所的中微子产生，并寻找超高能量宇宙射线的来源。使用不同方法进行通量计算发现，这种大小的探测器体积足以观测中微子源。可能的来源包括活动星系核、伽马射线暴和超新星遗迹。冰立方还将研究其他粒子物理主题：寻找地球或太阳中的弱相互作用大质量粒子（可能是暗物质的候选者）湮灭，中微子相互作用中的超对称特征，中微子性质的研究，以及磁单极子或额外维度等奇异现象。该提案要求资助LBNL冰立方小组的博士后和学生对冰立方数据进行分析。这项工作将受益于LBNL在冰立方方面的长期经验，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，从而回答美国国家研究委员会在宇宙物理学研究中提出的11个问题之一：“超高能量粒子从何而来？”该提案还包括教育和推广部分，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.