Astrophysics under the sea: the KM3NeT Neutrino Observatory
Maurizio Spurio (University of Bologna and INFN Bologna)
Thursday 19/12/2024 @ 11:00, CNR convention center
Neutrino telescopes aim to help in solving long-standing problems in astrophysics, such as the origin of cosmic rays. The field of neutrino astrophysics has received a strong burst from the recent discoveries of the IceCube detector at the South Pole. However, the sources and production mechanisms of those neutrinos are still largely unknown. Combining neutrino data with electromagnetic measurements and, possibly, gravitational waves in a multi-messenger approach will increase our ability to identify high-energy cosmic accelerators. Neutrino telescopes in the Northern Earth hemisphere are possible only undersea and the transparency of the Mediterranean water allows for a very good angular resolution in the reconstruction of neutrino properties. This yields the possibility to observe the whole sky with very high duty-cycle, and an unprecedented sensitivity in the search for neutrino sources located in the Southern Sky, including most of the Galactic plane. The KM3NeT collaboration is building two underwater neutrino detectors in the Mediterranean: the ARCA (mainly focusing on astrophysics) and ORCA (focusing on particle physics). ARCA is located off the Sicilian coast and aims to detect and identify astrophysical neutrino sources and playing an essential role in multi-messenger astronomy in the next decade. At today, 33 detection units out 115 have already been deployed at the Italian site and the detector is producing physics results. The status of detector construction, initial extremely exciting results and future perspectives are presented.