Optical analysis of the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) site using data from the first pathfinder mooring

Abstract

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) is an initiative by a collaboration of Canadian and German universities as well as Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) to develop a new large-scale neutrino telescope 2600 m below the ocean off the coast of western Canada. While the instrumented volume needs to be at least on the order of km for the physics goals of P-ONE to be met, the density of photo sensors needs to be kept as low as possible in order to minimize construction costs. Naturally, this puts very high demands on the optical properties of water at the deployment site. Ideally, the water should exhibit minimal photon extinction and scattering to optimize the light yield and timing needed for reconstructing neutrino-induced Cherenkov light flashes. In addition, a low light background from natural undersea sources such as bioluminescence and K40 radioactive decay is necessary for achieving high sensitivity to neutrino events. In order to evaluate the proposed site for P-ONE, two pathfinder missions have been deployed successfully, one in 2018 and the other in 2020. In this presentation we will highlight the results from the first mission that was primarily aimed at evaluating the optical properties of the site in terms of absorption, scattering, and backgrounds.

Rapporteur ICRC 2021: Neutrinos and Muons

“…The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment Explorer (P-ONE) deployed the second pathfinder string [8]. The site off the coast of Vancouver has the potential to develop into a third large water array, as the infrastructure is already in place and first measurements of the attenuation length are promising [9] (see also Figure 2 right).…”

“…Using this approach, the 3 Figure 2: Left: Light yield of different emissions for magnetic monopoles carrying one Dirac charge and Q-balls with a charge of 1020 in comparison to a bare muon passing through ice [30]. Right: Attenuation length vs. wavelength from the simultaneous multi-wavelength fit obtained at the P-ONE site [9]. of ice and water resulting from moving charges, a potential new detection channel for exotic "slow" particles in neutrino telescopes [30] (see also Figure 2).…”