KM3NeT - News Archive

Archive of news items

Poster prize for ORCA in an emerging research field

prem_model_v322 July 2016 – The KM3NeT Collaboration congratulates Simon Bourret, Astroparticle and Cosmology, Paris with the award of one of the Best Poster Prizes for his poster presented at the International ISAPP Summer Institute, 11-21 July in L’Aquila, Italy.

During 10 days at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, young physicists, geophysicists, and geologists exchanged knowledge and skills with the aim to shape an emerging inter-disciplinary field of geoscience research using methodologies from (astro)particle physics.

In his poster with the title ‘Earth Tomography with KM3NeT/ORCA’ Simon showed the potential of the ORCA detector for imaging the interior of the Earth using neutrinos penetrating the globe.

The idea is to use the ‘matter-effect’ that for neutrinos traversing the Earth will modify the pattern of oscillating from one neutrino type into another. Using this ‘matter-effect’ and studying the angular and energy distribution of these neutrinos, tomographic information of the Earth interior can be provided.  In particular, ORCA may contribute to constraining the chemical composition of Earth layers that are not accessible for direct geophysical measurements. A new research field is emerging!

IMG_20160720_111325

 

 

 

KM3NeT at Neutrino 2016

KM3NeT at Neutrino14 July 2016 – Last week, KM3NeT researchers have participated in the biannual get together of neutrino physicists at the 27th International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics, Neutrino 2016 in London, England. Read more

Poster prize

Joao Coelho-neutrino2016

12 July 2016 – The KM3NeT Collaboration congratulates João Coelho, Astroparticle and Cosmology, Paris with the award of one of the Nature Poster Prizes at the Neutrino 2016 conference, 4-9 July in London. The jury selected his poster with the title Probing new physics with atmospheric neutrinos at KM3NeT-ORCA out of more than 400 poster presentations!

With his poster, João presented the prospects of searching with the ORCA detector for new physics phenomena, such as sterile neutrinos and non-standard interactions, using atmospheric neutrinos. Among its highlights were animations presented as flipbooks and also available here. Following the award ceremony, the posters were presented in five minute summary talks in the plenary sessions.

JCoelho_201607_Poster_Neutrino_KM3NeT-v4

 

ARCA is growing up

IMG_621516 May 2016 – During a five day sea campaign last week, two detection units for ARCA were deployed at the Italian KM3NeT site. On board the Ambrosius Tide, the detection units arrived from the harbour of Malta at the KM3NeT-It  site, 80 km off-shore the South-East of Sicily. After a survey of the area and inspection of the deep-sea infrastructure, the units were deployed at their pre-defined locations. With a speed of about 12 meter per minute, the descent of a unit from the sea surface to touch-down at a depth of 3500 meter took about 4.5 hours. Read more

KM3NeT selected for the 2016 ESFRI Roadmap

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 12.17.57 PM copia10 March 2016 – Today, at its launch event at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam, the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) announced that KM3NeT 2.0 is selected for the 2016 ESFRI Roadmap for Research Infrastructures.
The ESFRI Roadmap identifies new Research Infrastructures of pan-European interest corresponding to the long-term needs of the European research communities. Read more

KM3NeT and Hyper-K team up

16 February 2016 – The two neutrino collaborations Hyper-Kamiokande and KM3NeT have signed a memorandum of understanding for exchange of know-how on detector technology and software development. Hyper-Kamiokande is to be the third generation water Cherenkov detector in Kamioka in Japan designed for nucleon decay searches and neutrino studies. In the Mediterranean Sea, KM3NeT will be the largest water Cherenkov detector designed for neutrino astronomy and neutrino physics research. Read more

KM3NeT congratulates LIGO

KM3NeT congratulates the colleagues of the LIGO Collaboration with the first detection of gravitational waves. An impressive achievement that not only proves Einstein to be right, but also gives a strong boost to multi-messenger astronomy.

Thanks to the rapid sharing of information by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration, ANTARES and IceCube could search their data for neutrinos emitted simultaneously with the LIGO event.

Today the three collaborations published the results of this search in a draft paper with the title ‘High-energy Neutrino follow-up search of Gravitational Wave Event GW150914 with ANTARES and IceCube’.

For more information see also the news at the ANTARES website.

A Letter of Intent for KM3NeT 2.0

bob2_for_website 28 Jan 2016 -Today, scientists of the KM3NeT Collaboration have announced KM3NeT 2.0, their ambition for the immediate future to further exploit the clear waters of the deep Mediterranean Sea for the detection of cosmic and atmospheric neutrinos. The published Letter of Intent  details the science performance as well as the technical design of the KM3NeT 2.0 infrastructure.

Read more