IIHE invited seminar: The IceCube Neutrino Observatory as an Instrument for Glaciology
by
Martin Rongen(RWTH Aachen University)
→
Europe/Brussels
Jean Sacton Seminar room (1G003) (IIHE)
Jean Sacton Seminar room (1G003)
IIHE
Description
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory instruments about 1 km3 of deep, glacial ice below the geographic South Pole with 5160 optical modules to register the Cherenkov light of passing relativistic, charged particles.
After discovering a diffuse flux of high-energy cosmic neutrinos in 2013, there is now an on-going search to identify the astrophysical sources. This effort relies heavily on an ever more precise understanding of the optical scattering and absorption properties of the instrumented ice. In turn IceCube can now provide a unique insight into the glacier which, due to the large distances observed, is in many ways complementary to ice cores.
Most notably we observe a dependence on the propagation direction of the photons, with the direction of least extinction being aligned with the local flow direction of the ice. In this talk a depth dependent measurement of the strength of this anisotropy will be presented and possible explanations of the effect in the context of the distribution of impurities in the crystal fabric are going to be discussed.