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ANTARES Collaboration

Publications and source records attributed to ANTARES Collaboration.

43 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

ANTARES: the first undersea neutrino telescope

The ANTARES Neutrino Telescope was completed in May 2008 and is the first operational Neutrino Telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The main purpose of the detector is to perform neutrino astronomy and the apparatus also offers facilities for marine and Earth sciences. This paper describes the design, the construction and the installation of the telescope in the deep sea, offshore from Toulon in France. An illustration of the detector performance is given.

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arXiv2010

Search for a diffuse flux of high-energy $ν_μ$ with the ANTARES neutrino telescope

A search for a diffuse flux of astrophysical muon neutrinos, using data collected by the ANTARES neutrino telescope is presented. A $(0.83\times 2π)$ sr sky was monitored for a total of 334 days of equivalent live time. The searched signal corresponds to an excess of events, produced by astrophysical sources, over the expected atmospheric neutrino background. The observed number of events is found compatible with the background expectation. Assuming an $E^{-2}$ flux spectrum, a 90% c.l. upper limit on the diffuse $ν_μ$ flux of $E^2Φ_{90%} = 5.3 \times 10^{-8} \ \mathrm{GeV\ cm^{-2}\ s^{-1}\ sr^{-1}} $ in the energy range 20 TeV - 2.5 PeV is obtained. Other signal models with different energy spectra are also tested and some rejected.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2010

Zenith distribution and flux of atmospheric muons measured with the 5-line ANTARES detector

The ANTARES high energy neutrino telescope is a three-dimensional array of about 900 photomultipliers distributed over 12 mooring lines installed in the Mediterranean Sea. Between February and November 2007 it acquired data in a 5-line configuration. The zenith angular distribution of the atmospheric muon flux and the associated depth-intensity relation are measured and compared with previous measurements and Monte Carlo expectations. An evaluation of the systematic effects due to uncertainties on environmental and detector parameters is presented.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2007

The ANTARES detector: background sources and effects on detector performance

The ANTARES Collaboration is deploying a large neutrino detector at a depth of 2475 m in the Mediterranean Sea, 40 km off shore from La Seyne-sur-Mer in South France. The construction of this 12-line detector with 75 phototubes per line will be completed early 2008. Data taking has begun since April 2005 with an instrumentation line also equipped with optical modules. The first 5 detector lines are operational since January 2007. The telescope is aimed to observe high energy cosmic neutrinos through the detection of the Cerenkov light produced by up-going induced muons. Background sources are due to atmospheric neutrinos as well as misreconstructed atmospheric muons. Additional backgrounds inherent to the sea water environment come from 40K decay and marine organisms' luminescence. While the contribution of the former is expected to be constant at a level of about 45 kHz, the bioluminescence has shown large time variations, with periods of very high activity, up to several hundred kHz. Description of these background sources will be reported, and effects on detector performance will be described. Methods recently developed to improve the detection efficiency in high background periods will be described, together with some of the results obtained.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

The ANTARES Optical Beacon System

ANTARES is a neutrino telescope being deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of a three dimensional array of photomultiplier tubes that can detect the Cherenkov light induced by charged particles produced in the interactions of neutrinos with the surrounding medium. High angular resolution can be achieved, in particular when a muon is produced, provided that the Cherenkov photons are detected with sufficient timing precision. Considerations of the intrinsic time uncertainties stemming from the transit time spread in the photomultiplier tubes and the mechanism of transmission of light in sea water lead to the conclusion that a relative time accuracy of the order of 0.5 ns is desirable. Accordingly, different time calibration systems have been developed for the ANTARES telescope. In this article, a system based on Optical Beacons, a set of external and well-controlled pulsed light sources located throughout the detector, is described. This calibration system takes into account the optical properties of sea water, which is used as the detection volume of the ANTARES telescope. The design, tests, construction and first results of the two types of beacons, LED and laser-based, are presented.

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arXiv2006

First results of the Instrumentation Line for the deep-sea ANTARES neutrino telescope

In 2005, the ANTARES Collaboration deployed and operated at a depth of 2500 m a so-called Mini Instrumentation Line equipped with Optical Modules (MILOM) at the ANTARES site. The various data acquired during the continuous operation from April to December 2005 of the MILOM confirm the satisfactory performance of the Optical Modules, their front-end electronics and readout system, as well as the calibration devices of the detector. The in-situ measurement of the Optical Module time response yields a resolution better than 0.5 ns. The performance of the acoustic positioning system, which enables the spatial reconstruction of the ANTARES detector with a precision of about 10 cm, is verified. These results demonstrate that with the full ANTARES neutrino telescope the design angular resolution of better than $0.3^\circ$ can be realistically achieved.

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arXiv1999

A Deep Sea Telescope for High Energy Neutrinos

The ANTARES Collaboration proposes to construct a large area water Cherenkov detector in the deep Mediterranean Sea, optimised for the detection of muons from high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. This paper presents the scientific motivation for building such a device, along with a review of the technical issues involved in its design and construction. The observation of high energy neutrinos will open a new window on the universe. The primary aim is to study particle acceleration mechanisms in energetic astrophysical objects such as AGN's and GRB's, which may also shed light on the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. At lower energies, non-baryonic dark matter may be detected through the neutrinos produced when gravitationally captured WIMPs annihilate in the cores of the Earth and the Sun. Neutrino oscillations can be measured by studying distortions in the energy spectrum of upward-going atmospheric nu's. The characteristics of the proposed site are an important consideration in detector design. Water properties and detector environment parameters were measured. These tests have shown that the proposed site provides a good-quality environment for the detector, and have also demonstrated the feasibility of the deployment technique. The present proposal concerns the construction and deployment of a detector with surface area 0.1 km^2. The conceptual design for such a detector is discussed, and the physics performance evaluated. An overview of costs and schedules is presented. It is concluded that a 0.1 km^2 detector is technically feasible at realistic cost, and offers an exciting and varied physics and astrophysics programme. Such a detector will also provide practical experience which will be invaluable in the design and operation of future detectors on the astrophysically desirable 1 km^2 scale.

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