IceCube Maintenance and Operations PI: Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The IceCube Neutrino Detector/Telescope project is international in scope, with foreign partners from Belgium, Germany, and Sweden contributing to the detector construction and planning to contribute to the M&O effort. Following very successful construction seasons at the South Pole in 2004-2007, 30% of the planned IceCube array Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) are now deployed in the deep ice at Pole, and is now capable of limited operations for science. Even at 30% completion, IceCube is the first of a next-generation of neutrino telescopes capable of reaching exposures required to detect sources of cosmic neutrinos with energies ranging from tera-electron volts to tens of peta-electron volts, with some reach to exa-electron volts and beyond. The proposed M&O award would provide infrastructure needed to: (1) maintain and operate the IceCube Neutrino Detector; (2) maintain and upgrade the software and computing support required for data analysis; (3) ensure the integrity of the collected data; (4) support specific research & development (R&D) efforts to optimize the existing detector and to manage the technical interfaces with potential expansions of the existing array; (5) provide support for a core central staff to ensure continuity of operations; and 6) coordinate education and outreach activities. Support would include funding for operation of IceCube systems at the South Pole Station and central M&O activities in the U.S. institutions. Since IceCube is an international project, the cost of M&O is to be born by agreement on a pro rata basis using the number of PhD researchers supported by the U.S. and non-U.S. funding agencies, using either cash or in-kind services. Broader impacts of the proposed project cover three important areas: science and scientific infrastructure beyond current detector construction, computing and data management in remote and distributed environments, and education and outreach.
By December 2010 the IceCube Project will complete the construction of the largest particle detector ever built. The instrument records interactions of high-energy neutrinos that travel through the cosmos and stop in the ultra-transparent natural ice that constitutes the detector. IceCube also detects muons and neutrinos that originate in the interactions of cosmic rays with the Earth’s atmosphere. By operating the partially completed detector the IceCube collaboration has announced the following initial results: We have measured the atmospheric neutrino spectrum to an energy of 400 TeV. The highest energy neutrinos observed at accelerator laboratories have energies of less than 1 TeV. Our measurements result in new best limits on violations of Lorenz invariance and Einstein’s equivalence principal. We have established that the arrival directions of the highest energy Galactic cosmic rays are not uniformly distributed in the sky. We have discovered a large excess in the direction of Vela, the strongest gamma ray source in the sky. At the highest neutrino energies we have extended the sensitivity of IceCube to the Southern sky. We have established the best sensitivity to neutrinos produced by extragalactic cosmic rays interacting with microwave photons, the so-called GZK neutrinos. We have reached the sensitivity to confirm or rule out gamma ray bursts as the sources of the extragalactic cosmic rays. We have established world-best limits on the existence of particle dark matter with spin-dependent interactions with ordinary matter by an indirect search method. In the alternative case of dominant spin-independent interactions, direct searches obtain the best limits. We have participated in video and teleconferences from the South Pole through collaborations with the IPY, the Exploratorium, and the Year of the Telescope programs. We supported a high school physics teacher in cooperation with the PolarTrec and Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship programs. By operating the completed detector we reach, by the best estimates, the sensitivity to reveal the sources of the Galactic and extragalactic cosmic rays.
