KM3NeT Collaboration(Aitllo, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Garcia Soto, A., Gozzini, S. R., et al. (2023). Probing invisible neutrino decay with KM3NeT/ORCA. J. High Energy Phys., 04(4), 090–30pp.
Abstract: In the era of precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters, upcoming neutrino experiments will also be sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. KM3NeT/ORCA is a neutrino detector optimised for measuring atmospheric neutrinos from a few GeV to around 100 GeV. In this paper, the sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector to neutrino decay has been explored. A three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state v3 decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino, is considered. We find that KM3NeT/ORCA would be sensitive to invisible neutrino decays with 1/alpha 3 = T3/m3 < 180 ps/eV at 90% confidence level, assuming true normal ordering. Finally, the impact of neutrino decay on the precision of KM3NeT/ORCA measurements for theta(23), Delta m(31)(2) and mass ordering have been studied. No significant effect of neutrino decay on the sensitivity to these measurements has been found.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Corredoira, I., et al. (2020). Event reconstruction for KM3NeT/ORCA using convolutional neural networks. J. Instrum., 15(10), P10005–39pp.
Abstract: The KM3NeT research infrastructure is currently under construction at two locations in the Mediterranean Sea. The KM3NeT/ORCA water-Cherenkov neutrino detector off the French coast will instrument several megatons of seawater with photosensors. Its main objective is the determination of the neutrino mass ordering. This work aims at demonstrating the general applicability of deep convolutional neural networks to neutrino telescopes, using simulated datasets for the KM3NeT/ORCA detector as an example. To this end, the networks are employed to achieve reconstruction and classification tasks that constitute an alternative to the analysis pipeline presented for KM3NeT/ORCA in the KM3NeT Letter of Intent. They are used to infer event reconstruction estimates for the energy, the direction, and the interaction point of incident neutrinos. The spatial distribution of Cherenkov light generated by charged particles induced in neutrino interactions is classified as shower- or track-like, and the main background processes associated with the detection of atmospheric neutrinos are recognized. Performance comparisons to machine-learning classification and maximum-likelihood reconstruction algorithms previously developed for KM3NeT/ORCA are provided. It is shown that this application of deep convolutional neural networks to simulated datasets for a large-volume neutrino telescope yields competitive reconstruction results and performance improvements with respect to classical approaches.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Corredoira, I., et al. (2020). Deep-sea deployment of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope detection units by self-unrolling. J. Instrum., 15(11), P11027–18pp.
Abstract: KM3NeT is a research infrastructure being installed in the deep Mediterranean Sea. It will house a neutrino telescope comprising hundreds of networked moorings – detection units or strings – equipped with optical instrumentation to detect the Cherenkov radiation generated by charged particles from neutrino-induced collisions in its vicinity. In comparison to moorings typically used for oceanography, several key features of the KM3NeT string are different: the instrumentation is contained in transparent and thus unprotected glass spheres; two thin Dyneema (R) ropes are used as strength members; and a thin delicate backbone tube with fibre-optics and copper wires for data and power transmission, respectively, runs along the full length of the mooring. Also, compared to other neutrino telescopes such as ANTARES in the Mediterranean Sea and GVD in Lake Baikal, the KM3NeT strings are more slender to minimise the amount of material used for support of the optical sensors. Moreover, the rate of deploying a large number of strings in a period of a few years is unprecedented. For all these reasons, for the installation of the KM3NeT strings, a custom-made, fast deployment method was designed. Despite the length of several hundreds of metres, the slim design of the string allows it to be compacted into a small, re-usable spherical launching vehicle instead of deploying the mooring weight down from a surface vessel. After being lowered to the seafloor, the string unfurls to its full length with the buoyant launching vehicle rolling along the two ropes. The design of the vehicle, the loading with a string, and its underwater self-unrolling are detailed in this paper.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Garcia Soto, A., et al. (2022). The KM3NeT multi-PMT optical module. J. Instrum., 17(7), P07038–28pp.
Abstract: The optical module of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope is an innovative multi-faceted large area photodetection module. It contains 31 three-inch photomultiplier tubes in a single 0.44 m diameter pressure-resistant glass sphere. The module is a sensory device also comprising calibration instruments and electronics for power, readout and data acquisition. It is capped with a breakout-box with electronics for connection to an electro-optical cable for power and long-distance communication to the onshore control station. The design of the module was qualified for the first time in the deep sea in 2013. Since then, the technology has been further improved to meet requirements of scalability, cost-effectiveness and high reliability. The module features a sub-nanosecond timing accuracy and a dynamic range allowing the measurement of a single photon up to a cascade of thousands of photons, suited for the measurement of the Cherenkov radiation induced in water by secondary particles from interactions of neutrinos with energies in the range of GeV to PeV. A distributed production model has been implemented for the delivery of more than 6000 modules in the coming few years with an average production rate of more than 100 modules per month. In this paper a review is presented of the design of the multi-PMT KM3NeT optical module with a proven effective background suppression and signal recognition and sensitivity to the incoming direction of photons.
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KM3NeT Collaboration(Aiello, S. et al), Alves Garre, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Garcia Soto, A., Gozzini, S. R., et al. (2023). KM3NeT broadcast optical data transport system. J. Instrum., 18(2), T02001–22pp.
Abstract: The optical data transport system of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea will provide more than 6000 optical modules in the detector arrays with a point-to-point optical connection to the control stations onshore. The ARCA and ORCA detectors of KM3NeT are being installed at a depth of about 3500 m and 2500 m, respectively and their distance to the control stations is about 100 kilometers and 40 kilometers. In particular, the two detectors are optimised for the detection of cosmic neutrinos with energies above about 1 TeV (ARCA) and for the detection of atmospheric neutrinos with energies in the range 1 GeV-1 TeV (ORCA). The expected maximum data rate is 200 Mbps per optical module. The implemented optical data transport system matches the layouts of the networks of electro-optical cables and junction boxes in the deep sea. For efficient use of the fibres in the system the technology of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing is applied. The performance of the optical system in terms of measured bit error rates, optical budget are presented. The next steps in the implementation of the system are also discussed.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Reeb, N. et al), Alves, S., Carretero, V., Colomer, M., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Khan-Chowdhury, N. R., et al. (2023). Studying bioluminescence flashes with the ANTARES deep-sea neutrino telescope. Limnol. Oceanogr. Meth., 21(11), 734–760.
Abstract: We develop a novel technique to exploit the extensive data sets provided by underwater neutrino telescopes to gain information on bioluminescence in the deep sea. The passive nature of the telescopes gives us the unique opportunity to infer information on bioluminescent organisms without actively interfering with them. We propose a statistical method that allows us to reconstruct the light emission of individual organisms, as well as their location and movement. A mathematical model is built to describe the measurement process of underwater neutrino telescopes and the signal generation of the biological organisms. The Metric Gaussian Variational Inference algorithm is used to reconstruct the model parameters using photon counts recorded by photomultiplier tubes. We apply this method to synthetic data sets and data collected by the ANTARES neutrino telescope. The telescope is located 40 km off the French coast and fixed to the sea floor at a depth of 2475 m. The runs with synthetic data reveal that we can model the emitted bioluminescent flashes of the organisms. Furthermore, we find that the spatial resolution of the localization of light sources highly depends on the configuration of the telescope. Precise measurements of the efficiencies of the detectors and the attenuation length of the water are crucial to reconstruct the light emission. Finally, the application to ANTARES data reveals the first localizations of bioluminescent organisms using neutrino telescope data.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Colomer, M., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Khan-Chowdhury, N. R., et al. (2021). Constraining the contribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts to the high-energy diffuse neutrino flux with 10 yr of ANTARES data. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 500(4), 5614–5628.
Abstract: Addressing the origin of the astrophysical neutrino flux observed by IceCube is of paramount importance. Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are among the few astrophysical sources capable of achieving the required energy to contribute to such neutrino flux through p gamma interactions. In this work, ANTARFS data have been used to search for upward going muon neutrinos in spatial and temporal coincidence with 784 GRBs occurred from 2007 to 2017. For each GRB, the expected neutrino flux has been calculated in the framework of the internal shock model and the impact of the lack of knowledge on the majority of source redshifts and on other intrinsic parameters of the emission mechanism has been quantified. It is found that the model parameters that set the radial distance where shock collisions occur have the largest impact on neutrino flux expectations. In particular, the bulk Lorentz factor of the source ejecta and the minimum variability time-scale are found to contribute significantly to the GRB-neutrino flux uncertainty. For the selected sources, ANTARES data have been analysed by maximizing the discovery probability of the stacking sample through an extended maximum-likelihood strategy. Since no neutrino event passed the quality cuts set by the optimization procedure, 90 per cent confidence level upper limits (with their uncertainty) on the total expected diffuse neutrino flux have been derived, according to the model. The GRB contribution to the observed diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux around 100 TeV is constrained to be less than 10 percent.
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ANTARES and IceCube Collaborations(Albert, A. et al), Colomer, M., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Khan-Chowdhury, N. R., et al. (2020). Combined search for neutrinos from dark matter self-annihilation in the Galactic Center with ANTARES and IceCube. Phys. Rev. D, 102(8), 082002–13pp.
Abstract: We present the results of the first combined dark matter search targeting the Galactic Center using the ANTARES and IceCube neutrino telescopes. For dark matter particles with masses from 50 to 1000 GeV, the sensitivities on the self-annihilation cross section set by ANTARES and IceCube are comparable, making this mass range particularly interesting for a joint analysis. Dark matter self-annihilation through the tau(+)tau(-) , mu(+)mu(-) , b (b) over bar, and W+W- channels is considered for both the Navarro-Frenk-White and Burkert halo profiles. In the combination of 2101.6 days of ANTARES data and 1007 days of IceCube data, no excess over the expected background is observed. Limits on the thermally averaged dark matter annihilation cross section <sigma(A)upsilon > are set. These limits present an improvement of up to a factor of 2 in the studied dark matter mass range with respect to the individual limits published by both collaborations. When considering dark matter particles with a mass of 200 GeV annihilating through the tau(+)tau(-)channel, the value obtained for the limit is 7.44 x 10(-24) cm(3) s(-1 )for the Navarro-Frenk-White halo profile. For the purpose of this joint analysis, the model parameters and the likelihood are unified, providing a benchmark for forthcoming dark matter searches performed by neutrino telescopes.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Colomer, M., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Khan-Chowdhury, N. R., et al. (2020). Observation of the cosmic ray shadow of the Sun with the ANTARES neutrino telescope. Phys. Rev. D, 102(12), 122007–7pp.
Abstract: The ANTARES detector is an undersea neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The search for pointlike neutrino sources is one of the main goals of the ANTARES telescope, requiring a reliable method to evaluate the detector angular resolution and pointing accuracy. This work describes the study of the Sun “shadow” effect with the ANTARES detector. The shadow is the deficit in the atmospheric muon flux in the direction of the Sun caused by the absorption of the primary cosmic rays. This analysis is based on the data collected between 2008 and 2017 by the ANTARES telescope. The observed statistical significance of the Sun shadow detection is 3.7 sigma, with an estimated angular resolution of 0.59 degrees +/- 0.10 degrees for downward-going muons. The pointing accuracy is found to be consistent with the expectations and no evidence of systematic pointing shifts is observed.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Colomer, M., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Khan-Chowdhury, N. R., et al. (2020). Search for dark matter towards the Galactic Centre with 11 years of ANTARES data. Phys. Lett. B, 805, 135439–6pp.
Abstract: Neutrino detectors participate in the indirect search for the fundamental constituents of dark matter (DM) in form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). In WIMP scenarios, candidate DM particles can pair-annihilate into Standard Model products, yielding considerable fluxes of high-energy neutrinos. A detector like ANTARES, located in the Northern Hemisphere, is able to perform a complementary search looking towards the Galactic Centre, where a high density of dark matter is thought to accumulate. Both this directional information and the spectral features of annihilating DM pairs are entered into an unbinned likelihood method to scan the data set in search for DM-like signals in ANTARES data. Results obtained upon unblinding 3170 days of data reconstructed with updated methods are presented, which provides a larger, and more accurate, data set than a previously published result using 2101 days. A non-observation of dark matter is converted into limits on the velocity-averaged cross section for WIMP pair annihilation.
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