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

南极Muon和中微子探测器阵列(Amanda)项目将在南极冰盖中埋入大约一公里深的灵敏光电倍增管，以将冰本身用作切伦科夫探测器，用于探测穿过地球的天体物理来源的高能中微子。此外，阿曼达将对北极附近大气中产生的中微子很敏感，可以用来测量中微子的性质。到目前为止，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中的一次短暂超新星爆发。最近，康普顿天文台卫星和最重要的是山上的大气切伦科夫望远镜发现了几个新的高能伽马射线源，也可能是中微子源。亚利桑那州霍普金斯还应该有许多可探测到的中微子源，而由于中间物质的存在，伽马射线或任何其他波长的电磁辐射都无法探测到。直到现在，建造中微子望远镜在技术上才变得可行，作为第一代此类仪器之一，阿曼达承诺将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.