Background studies for acoustic neutrino detection at the South PoleShow others and affiliations
2012 (English)In: Astroparticle physics, ISSN 0927-6505, E-ISSN 1873-2852, Vol. 35, no 6, p. 312-324Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The detection of acoustic signals from ultra-high energy neutrino interactions is a promising method to measure the flux of cosmogenic neutrinos expected on Earth. The energy threshold for this process depends strongly on the absolute noise level in the target material. The South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS), deployed in the upper part of four boreholes of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, has monitored the noise in Antarctic ice at the geographic South Pole for more than two years down to 500 m depth. The noise is very stable and Gaussian distributed. Lacking an in situ calibration up to now, laboratory measurements have been used to estimate the absolute noise level in the 10-50 kHz frequency range to be smaller than 20 mPa. Using a threshold trigger, sensors of the South Pole Acoustic Test Setup registered acoustic events in the IceCube detector volume and its vicinity. Acoustic signals from refreezing IceCube holes and from anthropogenic sources have been used to test the localization of acoustic events. An upper limit on the neutrino flux at energies E-v>10(11) GeV is derived from acoustic data taken over eight months. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2012. Vol. 35, no 6, p. 312-324
Keywords [en]
Acoustic neutrino detection, Absolute noise level, Neutrino flux limit
National Category
Physical Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-172168DOI: 10.1016/j.astropartphys.2011.09.004ISI: 000300760800004OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-172168DiVA, id: diva2:513698
2012-04-032012-04-022017-12-07Bibliographically approved