Speaker
Piera Sapienza
(LNS, Catania)
Description
An unambiguous identification of the emitting neutrino sources of the high-energy cosmic
neutrino flux reported by IceCube requires km3 neutrino telescopes with a large sky coverage
and good angular resolution. The KM3NeT Collaboration aims at building a cubic kilometre
scale neutrino telescope in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The detector technology has
been validated with prototypes operating at a depth of 2500m and 3500m. The modular nature
of the detector allows for a staged implementation with increasing size. KM3NeT phase-1,
made of 32 structures with an instrumented volume of 0.1 km3, has been funded and will be
deployed off-shore Capo Passero-Italy (KM3NeT-It) by 2016. Following this phase, a project
called KM3NeT 2.0 has been proposed with an upgraded physics program including the
measure of the neutrino mass hierarchy off-shore Toulon (ORCA). KM3NeT/ARCA, the
extension of the phase-1 detector to 1-2 km3, will be dedicated to high-energy neutrino
astronomy, allowing the almost full survey of the neutrino sky including the region of the
galactic centre. The characteristics of sea water allow to measure the neutrino direction with
very good angular resolution also for cascade events. The KM3NeT/ARCA sensitivity will
allow to detect the flux measured by IceCube within less than one year of observation, while
within about four years of observation KM3NeT/ARCA could give indications at 3-sigma level
on some candidate galactic point-like sources.
Author
Piera Sapienza
(LNS, Catania)
