The ANTARES Neutrino Telescope

Abstract

The ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope, at a depth of 2475 m in the Mediterranean Sea, near Toulon, is taking data in its final configuration of 12 detection lines. Each line is equipped with 75 photomultipliers (PMT) housed in glass pressure spheres arranged in 25 triplets at depths between 100 and 450 m above the sea floor. The PMTs look down at 45 • to have better sensitivity to the Cherenkov light from upgoing muons produced in the interactions of high energy neutrinos traversing the Earth. Such neutrinos may arrive from a variety of astrophysical sources, though the majority are atmospheric neutrinos. The data from 5 lines in operation in 2007 yielded a sufficient number of downgoing muons with which to study the detector performances, the vertical muon intensity and reconstruct the first upgoing neutrino induced muons.

Pulsar scintillation patterns and strangelets

“…We will restrict to Z = 1, A ∼ 10 3 droplets but larger A are allowed if they are less energetic remaining below observational CR bounds ∼ 10 20 eV. If the source is nearby by chance there are presently competitive limits from experiments such as ANTARES [34], who report a testing capability flux F ANTARES ∼ 2 × 10 −14 cm −2 sr −1 s −1 for A > ∼ 10 13 , or IceCube-22, who report F IC22 ∼ 10 −18 cm −2 sr −1 s −1 for A > ∼ 10 17 nuclearites [35]. It is however uncertain whether such large-A droplets can arrive on earth without suffering spallation or decay processes [20].…”