Speaker
Mr
Alexander Kappes
(ECAP, University Erlangen-Nuremberg)
Description
In recent decades we have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge on our Universe. However, up to now astronomical observations have been restricted to the electromagnetic spectrum. The detection of cosmic high-energy neutrinos (>~ 1 TeV) will complement the information from these observations and at the same time provide completely new insights. The low interaction probability, which renders neutrinos perfect cosmic messengers, also poses a large challenge for their
detection. Calculations indicate that neutrino telescopes of km^3-scale are necessary to detect neutrino fluxes from Galactic or extra-Galactic objects such as supernova remnants or gamma-ray
bursts which are thought to produce neutrinos up to the PeV scale. KM3NeT, which is currently in the design phase, targets to instrument at least one km^3 of deep-sea water in the Mediterranean
Sea, its field of view complementing the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole and exceeding it in sensitivity by a substantial factor. The presentation reports on the current status of the KM3NeT
project and on possible solutions for the various technical challenges encountered when building an off-shore detector in water depths of several kilometers. It will also discuss first estimates of the
expected sensitivity of the detector for different source classes.
Primary author
Mr
Alexander Kappes
(ECAP, University Erlangen-Nuremberg)
