2003-2004 USAP Field Season
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2003-2004 USAP Field Season |
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Aeronomy & Astrophysics
A-130-S
AMANDA is the largest detector of neutrinos in the world. Over the last five seasons, the project has drilled an array of holes in the ice 1 to 2 kilometers deep and installed over 600 photomultiplier tubes with "strings" of instrument suspended inside. The ice at South Pole is so clear that the tubes can detect Cherenkov radiation from several hundred meters away. Cherenkov radiation, visible as a blue glow, is emitted by collisions of high-energy neutrinos with ice or rock.
There are currently 26 strings in the ice, each hard-wired to computers in the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory (MAPO) facility. The computers analyze the gigabytes of collected data to determine true neutrino events.
Only in recent years has it become technically possible to build such large neutrino detectors. As one of the first of this new generation, AMANDA promises to make seminal contributions to the new field of high energy neutrino astronomy.
Dr. Vladimir Papitashvili
Program Manager
NSF/OPP
99-80474
Station:
South Pole Station
RPSC POC:
Charles Kaminski
Research Site(s):
South Pole Station
Dates in Antarctica:
Mid November to mid February
Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA)
Dr. Robert M. Morse
University of Wisconsin Madison
morse@amanda.physics.wisc.edu
http://amanda.uci.edu/
Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA)
Deploying Team Members:
Markus Ackermann
.
Jens Christopher Ahrens
.
Elisa Bernardini
.
David Z. Besson
.
Collin Blaise
.
David J. Boersma
.
Christian I. Bohm
.
Thomas T. Burgess
.
Steve T. Churchwell
.
Anna Kristina Davour
.
Thomas Feser
.
Terry B. Hannaford
.
Klaus Helbing
.
Marc Hellwig
.
Per Olof Hulth
.
Albrecht Karle
.
Martin Kestel
.
Ilya V. Kravchenko
.
Alf Timo Messarius
.
Robert M. Morse
.
Jiwoo Nam
.
Robert Paulos
.
Steffen Richter
.
Matthius Lueuthold
.
Darryn Schneider
.
Michael Stamatikos
.
Robert G. Stokstad
.
Karl-Heinz Sulanke
.
Lars Thollander
.
Wolfgang Wagner
.
You-Ren Wang
.
Michael Whitney
.
Christin Wiedemann
Research Objectives:
Neutrinos are elementary particles, with no electrical charge, and very little mass. They are very penetrating, interacting rarely with other particles. Low energy neutrinos have been detected from the sun and from Supernova 1987a in the Large Magellanic Cloud -- to date the only sources of extra-terrestrial neutrinos. The primary goal of the AMANDA experiment is to detect the expected sources of high energy neutrinos from cosmic objects such as active galaxies, pulsars, neutron stars, blazars, and gamma-ray bursts. If the present understanding of the acceleration mechanisms in these objects are correct, gamma-ray bursts should be copious emitters of neutrinos.