KM3NeT - News Archive

Archive of news items

KM3NeT meets in Caserta

This week, 22-26 October 2018, researchers and engineers of KM3NeT are in Caserta, Italy for their annual Fall-meeting. The meeting is organised by the colleagues of the KM3NeT team of INFN/Naples. A week full of presentations and discussions in parallel and plenary sessions. Today we are looking forward for an excellent Italian Collaboration dinner.

Thank you, Pasquale Migliozzi and your organising team for hosting us!


New KM3NeT management team elected

23 October 2018 – KM3NeT proudly presents its new management team!

In a few months from now, at 1 February 2019, the new management team will take over from the current one for a term of two years. Mauro Taiuti chairs the team as the Spokesperson (Director) of the KM3NeT Collaboration. He shares the tasks with Aart Heijboer, who is the Deputy Spokesperson. Miles Lindsey Clark is the Technical Project Manager and Paschal Coyle the Physics and Software Manager. Together they will lead the KM3NeT Collaboration of researchers and engineers in their endeavour of building the ARCA and ORCA neutrino detectors, taking data and searching with deep learning techniques and complex algorithms for signatures of neutrinos.

The KM3NeT Collaboration has great confidence in the team and congratulates all four members with their election!


KM3NeT wishes all XPRIZE finalists good luck!

During November and December 2018, KM3NeT will follow with great interest the sea operations of the finalists of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE.

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is a global competition for innovation in deep sea technology. The challenge for the nine teams in the final competition is to explore and map within 24 hours and with a resolution of at least five metres a large area of the seafloor of the Mediterranean Sea, off-shore the city of Kalamata on the Peleponnese  peninsula of Greece.

The selected area is about 500 km2 with depths up to 4000 m. The teams must explore at least 250 km2 of the area with their self-developed autonomous technology. The autonomous devices will be launched from a control centre in Kalamata, where they must be recovered again at the end of their explorative mission.

Fortunately for KM3NeT the selected area includes the future third installation site of KM3NeT. The high-resolution bathymetric map resulting from the measurements of the finalists will be made available to NCSR-Demokritos, one of the founding partners of KM3NeT and the managing institute of the KM3NeT-Gr installation site. The high-resolution map is a fantastic contribution to the implementation of the KM3NeT-Gr site.

The KM3NeT Collaboration wishes all finalists good luck in their challenging endeavour!


Welcome Tblisi State University

On Friday 21st of September 2018, a cooperation agreement was signed between the Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) and the KM3NeT Collaboration. During a ceremony in Tblisi, Georgia, George Sharvashidze, Rector of TSU, Mikheil Nioradze, Director of the Institute of High Energy Physics and Christos Markou, Chair of the KM3NeT Institutes Board signed the agreement that confirmed the accession to the KM3NeT Collaboration of the group led by Prof. Revaz Shanidze.

The KM3NeT Collaboration proudly welcomes its new partner and new colleagues.

 


KM3NeT congratulates IceCube!

KM3NeT congratulates the researchers of the IceCube Collaboration for their compelling evidence for high-energy neutrinos originating from blazar TXS 0506+056.

On 22 September 2017, the IceCube neutrino telescope detected a high-energy neutrino of about 290 TeV passing through the deep South Pole ice. When a series of gamma-ray telescopes looked at the same location in the sky they identified a blazar, TXS 0506+056, which happened to be flaring at that moment. In addition, IceCube found an excess of high-energy neutrino events with respect to atmospheric backgrounds at that location between September 2014 and March 2015. Details of the IceCube results can be found at their website.

The ANTARES neutrino telescope in the deep Mediterranean Sea followed up the initial IceCube real-time alert, but no time coincident events were found. However, a time integrated search during the period 2007-2017, did yield a small excess of neutrinos in that direction. Have a look at their website for details.

The first identification of an astrophysical source of high-energy neutrinos represents an important step forward for the fledgling field of multi-messenger astronomy. With its unprecedented angular resolution and complementary field of view, KM3NeT looks forward to soon joining IceCube and ANTARES in the hunt for the enigmatic sources of cosmic neutrinos. Exciting times are ahead of us!

 

Image: A blazar emitting neutrinos and gamma rays, Credit: IceCube/NASA

In this artistic rendering, a blazar is accelerating protons that produce pions, which produce neutrinos and gamma rays. Neutrinos are always the result of a hadronic reaction such as the one displayed here. Gamma rays can be produced in both hadronic and electromagnetic interactions.


Characterisation of photomultipliers for KM3NeT

31 May 2018 – Each KM3NeT optical sensor module contains 31 photomultiplier tubes. Each KM3NeT detection unit comprises 18 optical modules, i.e. a total of 18 x 31 = 558 photomultipliers. Together the ARCA and ORCA detectors of KM3NeT will comprise a total of 345 detection units, i.e. 345 x 558 =192,510 photomultipliers. So, you can imagine that it is important to very well understand the characteristics of these photomultipliers. Read more


Subatech for KM3NeT


Australia joins KM3NeT

KM3NeT is very happy to welcome to the Collaboration it’s newest institute and a new continent, the Western Sydney University, Australia. Led by Professor Miroslav Filipovic, director of the UWS Penrith Observatory, the group has considerable expertise in gamma and radio astronomy.


 


Convention about DOM production line in Morocco

On 7 February 2018, during the KM3NeT Collaboration meeting in Rabat, a convention was signed between the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieure et de la Recherche Scientific du Maroc, l’Université Mohammed V de Rabat, l’Université Mohamed premier d’Oujda, l’Université Cadi Ayyed de Marrakech and the KM3NeT Collaboration for the setup of a production line of optical modules for the construction of the KM3NeT telescopes in the Mediterranean Sea.

With the implementation of the production line the Morrocan groups in KM3NeT significantly contribute to the construction of KM3NeT.