@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ The KM3NeT neutrino detectors will continuously register neutrinos from the whol
The main science objective of KM3NeT/ARCA is the detection of high-energy neutrinos of cosmic origin. Neutrinos represent an alternative to photons and cosmic rays to explore the high-energy Universe. Neutrinos can emerge from dense objects and travel large distances, without being deflected by magnetic fields or interacting with radiation and matter. Thus, even modest numbers of detected neutrinos can be of utmost scientific relevance, by indicating the astrophysical objects in which cosmic rays are accelerated, or pointing to places where dark matter particles annihilate or decay.
The detector design of the KM3NeT/ARCA has been optimised to target astrophysical neutrinos at TeV energies and above in order to maximise the sensitivity to detect neutrinos from the cosmic ray accelerators in our Galaxy. In a neutrino telescope like ARCA, two main event topologies can be identified: Firstly, the 'track' topology indicates the presence of muons produced in \nu_\mu CC interactions and \nu_\tau interactions with muonic tau decays. Muons are the only class of particles that can be confidently identied, because they are the only particles that appear as tracks in the detector. Secondly, the 'shower' topology refers to a point-like particle shower from NC interaction of all three neutrino flavours, the CC interaction of \nu_e, and \nu_\tau interactions with non-muonic tau decays. For tau-neutrinos at sufficiently high energies (E >~ 100TeV), the produced tau-lepton can travel several metres before decaying resulting in distinguishable two individual showers. This allows identification of tau-neutrinos and allow aclear signature of the flavour of the neutrino primaries. All neutrino flavours can be used for neurino astronomy.
The detector design of the KM3NeT/ARCA has been optimised to target astrophysical neutrinos at TeV energies and above in order to maximise the sensitivity to detect neutrinos from the cosmic ray accelerators in our Galaxy. In a neutrino telescope like ARCA, two main event topologies can be identified: Firstly, the 'track' topology indicates the presence of muons produced in \nu_\mu CC interactions and \nu_\tau interactions with muonic tau decays. Muons are the only class of particles that can be confidently identified, because they are the only particles that appear as tracks in the detector. Secondly, the 'shower' topology refers to a point-like particle shower from NC interaction of all three neutrino flavours, the CC interaction of \nu_e, and \nu_\tau interactions with non-muonic tau decays. For tau-neutrinos at sufficiently high energies (E >~ 100TeV), the produced tau-lepton can travel several metres before decaying resulting in distinguishable two individual showers. This allows identification of tau-neutrinos and allow aclear signature of the flavour of the neutrino primaries. All neutrino flavours can be used for neutrino astronomy.
The preferred search strategy is to identify upward-moving tracks, which unambiguously indicates neutrino reactions since only neutrinos can traverse the Earth without being absorbed. A neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea on the Northern hemisphere of the Earth is well suited for this purpose, since most of the potential Galactic sources are in the Southern sky.
