Physical Society Colloquium

The Birth of Neutrino Astronomy, and its newest telescope, Antares

Larry Sulak

Department of Physics
Boston University

Since the advent of massive, ring-imaging Cherenkov calorimeters, the pesky background to proton decay searches (low energy neutrinos) has led a path to discovery. Extragalactic neutrinos from Supernova 1978A, the shadow of the moon X-rayed by cosmic primaries, the sun imaged in neutrino “light”, the deficit of atmospheric muon neutrinos, and the oscillation of solar neutrinos, have all staged a pageant ranking among the great moments of particle astrophysics. Rising from the dashed dreams of Dumand, hugely scaled up versions of the original IMB... Amanda, and now IceCube and Antares... dare to extend the reach of this technology to astronomy with high energy (10-100 TeV) neutrinos. First results from a telescope aimed at our galaxy, Antares, 2.4 km deep in the Mediterranean, and the proposal for its upgrade, Km3net, will be discussed.