As cosmic rays collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, air showers containing atmospheric muons and neutrinos are produced. The atmospheric neutrinos are then detected by DeepCore, a denser and smaller array of sensors in the center of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. Compared to the main IceCube detector, DeepCore is sensitive […]
Research
Observation of a spectral change in the flux of astrophysical neutrinos
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, searches for weakly interacting particles called neutrinos that are able to travel undisturbed through the cosmos. Of interest are high-energy astrophysical neutrinos that can arise from cosmic ray interactions with matter or photons in astrophysical sources. Thus far, the dominant sources of the […]
Identifying and cleaning radio signals from cosmic-ray air showers using machine learning
When high-energy particles called cosmic rays collide with Earth’s atmosphere, they create cascades of particles or air showers that emit faint radio signals. Because they are so faint, they are often drowned out by background signals from natural sources (the universe) and man-made sources (radio transmitters), making it difficult to discern signals originating from a […]
Successful design, production, and testing of LED calibration systems for Upgrade sensor modules
Neutrinos are weakly interacting particles that are able to travel unhindered through the cosmos. When a neutrino interacts with a molecule in the ice, blue light is emitted from the resulting secondary charged particles through a process called Cherenkov radiation. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole consists of an array of 5,160 optical […]
GollumFit: An open-source software for neutrino telescope analyses
At the South Pole, there exists the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a gigaton-scale detector that detects tiny, nearly massless particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos can travel unhindered through space and, thus, can help uncover otherwise obscured parts of the universe. Many IceCube analyses study a diffuse neutrino flux—coming from all directions across the entire sky—that originate mostly […]
A search for a correlation between millimeter-bright blazars and astrophysical neutrinos
Blazars are active galactic nuclei (AGN)—supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies—that shoot out powerful jets of particles and light directed at Earth, making them some of the brightest objects in the universe. Because blazars can accelerate particles to extremely high energies, they are an attractive candidate as sources for high-energy neutrinos, the subject […]
IceCube’s first hunt for neutrino sources using two types of signals
The origins of cosmic rays—and the astrophysical sources responsible for producing and accelerating them—remain an open question in science. However, high-energy neutrinos, nearly massless subatomic particles, may hold the key to resolving this long-standing mystery. At the South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory occupies a cubic kilometer of ice in search of high-energy neutrinos from […]
IceCube reaches 20-year milestone in quest to uncover the makeup of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
Cosmic rays are charged particles that rain down on Earth from space, with energies that can reach as high as a fast-thrown baseball packed into a single subatomic particle. Although a lot is known about cosmic rays, their origin still remains a century-old mystery. The highest energy particles, called ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), are closely […]
Improved IceTop measurements add to the cosmic-ray muon puzzle
When charged particles from outer space called cosmic rays collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, they create a shower of secondary particles (air showers) that cascade down to Earth. These secondary particles include photons, electrons, and muons. Some of these secondary particles reach the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, a detector consisting […]
Reconstruction of low-energy neutrinos using convolutional neural networks
When cosmic rays crash into the Earth’s atmosphere, air showers containing atmospheric muons and neutrinos are produced. The atmospheric neutrinos are then detected by DeepCore, a denser array of sensors in the bottom center of the IceCube detector at the South Pole. Compared to the main IceCube detector, DeepCore is sensitive to neutrinos down to […]