Abstract: As part of the European LAGUNA design study on a next-generation neutrino detector, we propose the liquid-scintillator detector LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) as a multipurpose neutrino observatory. The outstanding successes of the Borexino and KamLAND experiments demonstrate the large potential of liquid-scintillator detectors in low-energy neutrino physics. Low energy threshold, good energy resolution and efficient background discrimination are inherent to the liquid-scintillator technique. A target mass of 50 kt will offer a substantial increase in detection sensitivity. At low energies, the variety of detection channels available in liquid scintillator will allow for an energy and flavor-resolved analysis of the neutrino burst emitted by a galactic Supernova. Due to target mass and background conditions, LENA will also be sensitive to the faint signal of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background. Solar metallicity, time-variation in the solar neutrino flux and deviations from MSW-LMA survival probabilities can be investigated based on unprecedented statistics. Low background conditions allow to search for dark matter by observing rare annihilation neutrinos. The large number of events expected for geoneutrinos will give valuable information on the abundances of Uranium and Thorium and their relative ratio in the Earth's crust and mantle. Reactor neutrinos enable a high-precision measurement of solar mixing parameters. A strong radioactive or pion decay-at-rest neutrino source can be placed close to the detector to investigate neutrino oscillations for short distances and sub-MeV to MeV energies. At high energies, LENA will provide a new lifetime limit for the SUSY-favored proton decay mode into kaon and antineutrino, surpassing current experimental limits by about one order of magnitude. Recent studies have demonstrated that a reconstruction of momentum and energy of GeV particles is well feasible in liquid scintillator. Monte Carlo studies on the reconstruction of the complex event topologies found for neutrino interactions at multi-GeV energies have shown promising results. If this is confirmed. LENA might serve as far detector in a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment currently investigated in LAGUNA-LBNO.

Abstract: The ANTARES telescope is well-suited to detect neutrinos produced in astrophysical transient sources as it can observe a full hemisphere of the sky at all times with a high duty cycle. Radio-loud active galactic nuclei with jets pointing almost directly towards the observer, the so-called blazars, are particularly attractive potential neutrino point sources. The all-sky monitor LAT on board the Fermi satellite probes the variability of any given gamma-ray bright blazar in the sky on time scales of hours to months. Assuming hadronic models, a strong correlation between the gamma-ray and the neutrino fluxes is expected. Selecting a narrow time window on the assumed neutrino production period can significantly reduce the background. An unbinned method based on the minimization of a likelihood ratio was applied to a subsample of data collected in 2008 (61 days live time). By searching for neutrinos during the high state periods of the AGN light curve, the sensitivity to these sources was improved by about a factor of two with respect to a standard time-integrated point source search. First results on the search for neutrinos associated with ten bright and variable Fermi sources are presented.

Abstract: In this paper, a time-integrated search for point sources of cosmic neutrinos is presented using the data collected from 2007 to 2010 by the ANTARES neutrino telescope. No statistically significant signal has been found and upper limits on the neutrino flux have been obtained. Assuming an E-nu(-2). spectrum, these flux limits are at 1-10x10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) for declinations ranging from -90 degrees to 40 degrees. Limits for specific models of RX J1713.7-3946 and Vela X, which include information on the source morphology and spectrum, are also given.

Abstract: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) surveyed 14,555 deg(2), and delivered over a trillion pixels of imaging data. We present a study of galaxy clustering using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts, spanning between z = 0.45 and z = 0.65, constructed from the SDSS using methods described in Ross et al. This data set spans 11,000 deg(2) and probes a volume of 3 h(-3) Gpc(3), making it the largest volume ever used for galaxy clustering measurements. We describe in detail the construction of the survey window function and various systematics affecting our measurement. With such a large volume, high-precision cosmological constraints can be obtained given careful control and understanding of the observational systematics. We present a novel treatment of the observational systematics and its applications to the clustering signals from the data set. In this paper, we measure the angular clustering using an optimal quadratic estimator at four redshift slices with an accuracy of similar to 15%, with a bin size of delta(l) = 10 on scales of the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs; at l similar to 40-400). We also apply corrections to the power spectra due to systematics and derive cosmological constraints using the full shape of the power spectra. For a flat Lambda CDM model, when combined with cosmic microwave background Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 (WMAP7) and H-0 constraints from using 600 Cepheids observed by Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3; HST), we find Omega(Lambda) = 0.73 +/- 0.019 and H-0 to be 70.5 +/- 1.6 s(-1) Mpc(-1) km. For an open Lambda CDM model, when combined with WMAP7 + HST, we find Omega(K) = 0.0035 +/- 0.0054, improved over WMAP7+HST alone by 40%. For a wCDM model, when combined with WMAP7+HST+ SN, we find w = -1.071 +/- 0.078, and H-0 to be 71.3 +/- 1.7 s(-1) Mpc(-1) km, which is competitive with the latest large-scale structure constraints from large spectroscopic surveys such as the SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7) and WiggleZ. We also find that systematic-corrected power spectra give consistent constraints on cosmological models when compared with pre-systematic correction power spectra in the angular scales of interest. The SDSS-III Data Release 8 (SDSS-III DR8) Angular Clustering Data allow a wide range of investigations into the cosmological model, cosmic expansion (via BAO), Gaussianity of initial conditions, and neutrino masses. Here, we refer to our companion papers for further investigations using the clustering data. Our calculation of the survey selection function, systematics maps, and likelihood function for the COSMOMC package will be released at http://portal.nersc.gov/project/boss/galaxy/photoz/.

Abstract: We present new limits on early dark energy (EDE) from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite on large angular scales and South Pole Telescope on small angular scales. We find a strong upper limit on the EDE density of Omega(e) < 0.018 at 95% confidence, a factor of three improvement over WMAP data alone. We show that adding lower-redshift probes of the expansion rate to the CMB data improves constraints on the dark energy equation of state, but not the EDE density. We also explain how small-scale CMB temperature anisotropy constrains EDE.