Feasibility study of a new proton decay experiment at the South Pole

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Elisa Resconi
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2012 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 207495608

• Final Report Year: 2017

Final Report Abstract

The most important scientific achievements obtained within this funding are: • the first significant detection of atmospheric neutrino oscillations at energies near the 25 GeV oscillation maximum. The mixing parameters estimated, in agreement with the theoretical predictions of the standard three-neutrino flavor oscillation framework, were not yet competitive with the world best values in terms of precision. Though, the importance of this measurement is that prove that large volume neutrino telescopes can achieve a precision which is good enough in order to allow the study of neutrino properties; • the first design and sensitivity study of the PINGU detector to the NMO. The study has demonstrated the feasibility of the NMO measure with an affordable detector design. As a consequence of the work here reported, PINGU has been proposed as low-energy infill extension to the IceCube detector and a funding proposal has been recently submitted to the NSF; • the sensitivity study of PINGU to the proton decay. The study performed showed that a neutrino telescope with a detector design similar to the one of PINGU will not be sensible to the proton decay. A much heavily and compact instrumented detector is required to address the proton decay study in a competitive way. The main “surprises” that influenced the development of our scientific program have been essentially three: • the measurement of a non vanishing θ13 mixing angle by the Daya Bay collaboration following up the first hints provided by the Double Chooz collaboration; • the first measurement of the atmospheric neutrino oscillation with energy in the range 20-50 GeV obtained on the IceCube data; • the seminal paper from E. Kh. Akhmedov, S. Razzaque, A. Yu. Smirnov, “Mass hierarchy, 2-3 mixing and CP-phase with Huge Atmospheric Neutrino Detectors” (JHEP 02 (2013) 082), in which the three authors indicated the opportunity to measure the NMO using a very high statistics of atmospheric neutrinos in the energy regime between 1 and 10 GeV. The work done during the funded period and the listed achievements contributed in a significant way to start up a new scientific line of work within the IceCube collaboration seeding a new working group and a number of follow up analysis. We have been among the principle contributors in shaping the landscape for the next generation neutrino experiments.

Publications

• IceCube-Gen2: A Vision for the Future of Neutrino Astronomy in Antarctica
  IceCube Collaboration
  
• Letter of Intent: The Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU)
  IceCube-PINGU Collaboration
  
• High Energy Neutrino Astronomy: IceCube 22 and 40 Strings, Nucl.Phys.Proc.Suppl. 229-232 (2012) 267-273
  E. Resconi
  
• Measurement of Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations with IceCube, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 081801 (2013)
  IceCube Collaboration
  
• PINGU Sensitivity to the Neutrino Mass Hierarchy, paper presented at the Snowmass 2013
  D. Cowen, T. De Young, D. Grant, E. Resconi et al.
  
• Searches for high-energy neutrino emission in the Galaxy with the combined IceCube-AMANDA detector, Astrophys.J. 763 (2013) 33
  IceCube Collaboration