Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2012
Volume 57, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, March 31–April 3 2012; Atlanta, Georgia
Session D2: Invited Session: Particle Physics in Antarctica |
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Sponsoring Units: DPF Chair: Kara Hoffman, University of Maryland Room: Regency Ballroom V |
Saturday, March 31, 2012 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
D2.00001: Particle Physics with IceCube Invited Speaker: Darren Grant The IceCube neutrino observatory is the world's largest high-energy neutrino telescope, utilizing the deep Antarctic ice as the Cherenkov detector medium. In December 2010 the last of the observatory's 86 strings of optical detectors was deployed, completing the approximate cubic-kilometer array. With the addition of a low-energy extension, called DeepCore, the observatory has very high neutrino detection efficiency for energies ranging from approximately 10 GeV to a few EeV. The low-energy threshold establishes the first steps towards precision neutrino measurements in the Antarctic. Discussed will be early results from this emerging particle physics program as well as initial expectations from studies of potential future detector upgrades towards creating a multi-megaton neutrino detector with O(10 MeV) energy threshold. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 31, 2012 4:06PM - 4:42PM |
D2.00002: DM-Ice: A search for dark matter at the South Pole Invited Speaker: Reina Maruyama I will discuss the DM-Ice experiment, a proposed detector for a direct dark matter search deep in the Antarctic ice at the South Pole. The goal of the experiment is to perform the first search for an annual modulation of the dark matter signal in the southern hemisphere, and thereby test the claim by the DAMA experiment that they have observed such a signal at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. DM-Ice will use roughly 250 kg of low-background NaI detectors in the southern hemisphere where many of the environmental backgrounds associated with seasonal variations present in experiments in the northern hemisphere are either reversed in phase or absent altogether. A 17-kg prototype was deployed in December 2010 at the South Pole at the depth of $\sim$2200 m.w.e.\ as a feasibility study: it is now taking data. I will discuss the scientific reach, the status of the 17-kg detector, and the plans for the full-scale experiment. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, March 31, 2012 4:42PM - 5:18PM |
D2.00003: Antarctic radio Askaryan neutrino telescopes Invited Speaker: Amy Connolly There are strong motivations for a detectable flux of ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic neutrinos above 10$^{17-18}$~eV. Neutrinos in this regime are expected from interactions between the highest energy cosmic rays and cosmic microwave background photons, and can also originate from the UHE sources themselves. Radio Cerenkov technique is the most promising technique for instrumenting a detection volume large enough to detect the low expected fluxes. The RICE experiment pioneered the radio Cerenkov technique with antennas deployed along strings of the AMANDA experiment deep in the South Pole ice. New radio arrays being deployed in the Antarctic ice are designed to measure dozens of these unique cosmic messengers to exploit the rich particle physics and astrophysical information that they carry. I will discuss the status and results from initial deployments of the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) near the South Pole, and the ARIANNA array on the Ross Ice Shelf. I will also describe how these experiments could measure neutrino-nucleon cross sections at energies that exceed those probed by the LHC. [Preview Abstract] |
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