Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own galaxy, and from distant galaxies. Upon impact with Earth's atmosphere, cosmic rays produce showers of secondary particles, some of which reach the surface, although the bulk is deflected off into space by the magnetosphere or the heliosphere.
Neutrino astronomy is the branch of astronomy that observes astronomical objects with neutrino detectors in special observatories. Neutrinos are created as a result of certain types of radioactive decay, nuclear reactions such as those that take place in the Sun or high energy astrophysical phenomena, in nuclear reactors, or when cosmic rays hit atoms in the atmosphere. Neutrinos rarely interact with matter, meaning that it is unlikely for them to scatter along their trajectory, unlike photons. Therefore, neutrinos offer a unique opportunity to observe processes that are inaccessible to optical telescopes, such as reactions in the Sun's core. Neutrinos can also offer a very strong pointing direction compared to charged particle cosmic rays.
A solar neutrino is a neutrino originating from nuclear fusion in the Sun's core, and is the most common type of neutrino passing through any source observed on Earth at any particular moment. Neutrinos are elementary particles with extremely small rest mass and a neutral electric charge. They only interact with matter via the weak interaction and gravity, making their detection very difficult. This has led to the now-resolved solar neutrino problem. Much is now known about solar neutrinos, but the research in this field is ongoing.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a neutrino observatory constructed at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The project is a recognized CERN experiment (RE10). Its thousands of sensors are located under the Antarctic ice, distributed over a cubic kilometre.
The Askaryan radiation also known as Askaryan effect is the phenomenon whereby a particle traveling faster than the phase velocity of light in a dense dielectric produces a shower of secondary charged particles which contains a charge anisotropy and thus emits a cone of coherent radiation in the radio or microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is similar to the Cherenkov radiation. It is named after Gurgen Askaryan, a Soviet-Armenian physicist who postulated it in 1962.
A neutrino detector is a physics apparatus which is designed to study neutrinos. Because neutrinos only weakly interact with other particles of matter, neutrino detectors must be very large to detect a significant number of neutrinos. Neutrino detectors are often built underground, to isolate the detector from cosmic rays and other background radiation. The field of neutrino astronomy is still very much in its infancy – the only confirmed extraterrestrial sources as of 2018 are the Sun and the supernova 1987A in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. Another likely source is the blazar TXS 0506+056 about 3.7 billion light years away. Neutrino observatories will "give astronomers fresh eyes with which to study the universe".
A wavelength shifter is a photofluorescent material that absorbs higher frequency photons and emits lower frequency photons. The material absorbs one photon, and emits one or multiple lower-energy photons. The relaxation time of the excited molecule is usually in the order of nanoseconds.
T2K is a particle physics experiment studying the oscillations of the accelerator neutrinos. The experiment is conducted in Japan by the international cooperation of about 500 physicists and engineers with over 60 research institutions from several countries from Europe, Asia and North America and it is a recognized CERN experiment (RE13). T2K collected data within its first phase of operation from 2010 till 2021. The second phase of data taking (T2K-II) is expected to start in 2023 and last until commencement of the successor of T2K – the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment in 2027.
The Kamioka Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research is a neutrino and gravitational waves laboratory located underground in the Mozumi mine of the Kamioka Mining and Smelting Co. near the Kamioka section of the city of Hida in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. A set of groundbreaking neutrino experiments have taken place at the observatory over the past two decades. All of the experiments have been very large and have contributed substantially to the advancement of particle physics, in particular to the study of neutrino astronomy and neutrino oscillation.
The Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT, is a future European research infrastructure that will be located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. It will host the next-generation neutrino telescope in the form of a water Cherenkov detector with an instrumented volume of several cubic kilometres distributed over three locations in the Mediterranean: KM3NeT-Fr, KM3NeT-It and KM3NeT-Gr. The KM3NeT project continues work done under the ANTARES, NEMO and NESTOR neutrino telescope projects.
A cosmic-ray observatory is a scientific installation built to detect high-energy-particles coming from space called cosmic rays. This typically includes photons, electrons, protons, and some heavier nuclei, as well as antimatter particles. About 90% of cosmic rays are protons, 9% are alpha particles, and the remaining ~1% are other particles.
Cherenkov radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium. A classic example of Cherenkov radiation is the characteristic blue glow of an underwater nuclear reactor. Its cause is similar to the cause of a sonic boom, the sharp sound heard when faster-than-sound movement occurs. The phenomenon is named after Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov.
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Experiment or High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory is a gamma-ray and cosmic ray observatory located on the flanks of the Sierra Negra volcano in the Mexican state of Puebla at an altitude of 4100 meters, at 18°59′41″N97°18′30.6″W. HAWC is the successor to the Milagro gamma-ray observatory in New Mexico, which was also a gamma-ray observatory based around the principle of detecting gamma-rays indirectly using the water Cherenkov method.
The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) is a proposed water Cherenkov detector experiment designed to examine the nature of neutrino interactions. This experiment will study phenomena like proton decay, and neutrino oscillations, by analyzing neutrino interactions in gadolinium-loaded water and measuring their neutron yield. Neutron Tagging plays an important role in background rejection from atmospheric neutrinos. By implementing early prototypes of LAPPDs, high precision timing is possible. The suggested location for ANNIE is the SciBooNE hall on the Booster Neutrino Beam associated with the MiniBooNE experiment. The neutrino beam originates in Fermilab where The Booster delivers 8 GeV protons to a beryllium target producing secondary pions and kaons. These secondary mesons decay to produce a neutrino beam with an average energy of around 800 MeV. ANNIE will begin installation in the summer of 2015. Phase I of ANNIE, mapping the neutron background, completed in 2017. The detector is being upgraded for full science operation which is expected to begin late 2018.
The diffuse supernova neutrino background(DSNB) is a theoretical population of neutrinos (and anti-neutrinos) cumulatively originating from all core-collapse supernovae events throughout the history of the universe. Though it has not yet been directly detected, the DSNB is theorized to be isotropic and consists of neutrinos with typical energies on the scale of 107 eV. Current detection efforts are limited by the influence of background noise in the search for DSNB neutrinos and are therefore limited to placing limits on the parameters of the DSNB, namely the neutrino flux. Restrictions on these parameters have gotten more strict in recent years, but many researchers are looking to make direct observations in the near future with next generation detectors. The DSNB is not to be confused with the cosmic neutrino background (CNB), which is comprised by relic neutrinos that were produced during the Big Bang and have much lower energies (10−4 to 10−6 eV).
The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND) is a proposed large-scale detector designed to collect ultra-high energy cosmic particles as cosmic rays, neutrinos and photons with energies exceeding 1017 eV. This project aims at solving the mystery of their origin and the early stages of the universe itself. The proposal, formulated by an international group of researchers, calls for an array of 200,000 receivers to be placed on mountain ranges around the world.
The STEREO experiment investigates the possible oscillation of neutrinos from a nuclear reactor into light so-called sterile neutrinos. It is located at the Institut Laue–Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France. The experiment started operating and taking data in November 2016.
Teresa Montaruli is an Italian astronomer specializing in neutrino astronomy, and in particular in the search for high-energy neutrinos from cosmic sources. She is a professor in the particle physics department at the University of Geneva.
