2014/12/16 by Gen Collaboration, M. G. Aartsen, Gen2 Collaboration +425 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Neutrino Physics Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1412.5106
openalex publication_date 2014/12/16 · openalex created_date 2019/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The recent observation by the IceCube neutrino observatory of an astrophysical flux of neutrinos represents the "first light" in the nascent field of neutrino astronomy. The observed diffuse neutrino flux seems to suggest a much larger level of hadronic activity in the non-thermal universe than previously thought and suggests a rich discovery potential for a larger neutrino observatory. This document presents a vision for an substantial expansion of the current IceCube detector, IceCube-Gen2, including the aim of instrumenting a 10 km3 volume of clear glacial ice at the South Pole to deliver substantial increases in the astrophysical neutrino sample for all flavors. A detector of this size would have a rich physics program with the goal to resolve the sources of these astrophysical neutrinos, discover GZK neutrinos, and be a leading observatory in future multi-messenger astronomy programs.