Physics and Astrophysics with IceCube Neutrino Observatory

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The funds will be used to accomplish the following scientific objectives: (1) Search for neutrinos associated with supernovae whose core collapsed produces TeV neutrinos while the mildly relativistic jet is making its way out of the collapsing stellar progenitor. (2) Search for bursts of correlated muon, electron, and tau neutrinos in the northern hemisphere. The team will use the best possible efficiency of detecting flaring time profiles by correlating the time, energy, and spatial positions of multiplets of neutrino events from both muon and cascade channels that will effectively double the effective area of the detector compared to present usage. (3) Search for violation of Lorentz-invariance (LIV) that arises in various quantum gravity theories, but typically at Planck energies that are not accessible on Earth. Using very high-energy neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts, the project aims to improve the current limit or find a violation of LIV. The assumption of the weak equivalence principle that both neutrinos and photons should undergo the same time delay as they pass through the gravitational potentials of galaxies will also be tested. (4) Search for a diffuse extraterrestrial flux of high-energy muon neutrinos from unresolved astrophysical sources that could lead to discovery of cosmic neutrinos even if individual sources are too weak for detection with a cubic-km detector. (5) Service to IceCube including maintenance and operations, playing a leading role in calibrations, monitoring, and simulations of various neutrino events. Continued involvement with students provides a broader impact to this proposed research and firmly grounds this effort in its educational mission.