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KM3NeT gathered online for its fall collaboration meeting

13 November 2024 – Last week , the KM3NeT Collaboration has met online for its fall meeting.

During the meeting, we reviewed the current status of data taking for both ARCA and ORCA detectors, discussed the advancements in their construction, the progresses in MC simulation and detector calibration, and outlined the plans for the ongoing data analyses.

It was also the occasion to celebrate our two last sea campaigns and thus the expanded configurations of the detectors, ARCA 33 and ORCA24. The deployment of new instrumentation on the ORCA site will allow for a precise monitoring of the detector position and water properties.

During the meeting Antoine Kouchner started his mandate as chairperson of the Institute Board, taking over from Uli Katz: with many thanks to Uli for all the work done in the past years, and good luck to Antoine for his new duty.

Also during the meeting, the process to elect the new Management Team of the Collaboration was started.

Finally, KM3NeT gave a heartfelt greeting to its new members. Juan Antonio Aguilar Sánchez of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and Elisa Bernardini of Padova University, Italy,  joined as Observers, while the team led by Arthur Ukleja from the University of Krakow, Poland, was endorsed as Full Member. 

A warm welcome to everyone!

It was great to see the advancements in the physics analyses as well as the simulation and calibration works, to discuss recent scientific advancements and to see the Collaboration continue to grow.

The next Collaboration Meeting is scheduled for January, in Belgium, at Louvain-la-Neuve.

Welcome ARCA33 and ORCA24!

28 October 2024 – The latest sea campaigns at both the KM3NeT’s ARCA and ORCA sites have led to major progress in expanding detector installations and improving calibration systems.

The number of detection units in operation in the deep sea has been increased to 57: 33 in ARCA and 24 in ORCA.

Despite bad weather at the ARCA site, the so-called Phase-1 part of the apparatus was completed, while construction of Phase-2 was started with the installation of two new junction boxes, three detection units (exploiting a new data acquisition architecture), and calibration components. The operations also included important maintenance tasks, such as recovering and replacing acoustic beacons. All optical modules of the deployed strings are fully operational. KM3NeT/ARCA now comprises 33 detection units.

At the ORCA site, a 60-hour calm weather window allowed the team to deploy the Calibration Unit (Calibration Base+Instrumentation Unit) and to install an additional detection unit. After these successful installations, node 1 of ORCA is complete and fully functional, an important milestone in the construction of ORCA. The total number of functional detection units at ORCA has now reached 24.

These recent efforts at both sites underscore KM3NeT’s expanding capability in detecting and studying neutrinos from the sea’s depths. The whole Collaboration extends its gratitude to the offshore and onshore teams whose hard work made these successful operations possible.
A furled detection unit ready for the deployment at the ORCA site
ORCA offshore team on the Castor 02 ship
Components for ARCA on the deck of the Optimus Prime ship: in the foreground is one junction box, behind it there are a couple of spools with the submarine interlink cables and then some detection units
ARCA onshore shift crew at the site of Portopalo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ATLAS comet visible from the harbour of Portopalo di Capo Passero

 

Sonar scan of the ORCA site taken by the ROV at the end of the operation. The anchors of the detections Units (DUs), the junction box (JB1), the Calibration Base (CB), the Instrumentation Unit (IU) and the Module Instrumentation Interface (MII) are all visible.

Neutrino 2024 Poster Winner: Isabel Goos

03 July 2024 – In June, KM3NeT scientist participated to the XXXI International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics (Neutrino 2024), held in Milan, Italy, and organized by the University of Milano – Bicocca, the University of Milan and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN).

As one of the largest conferences in astroparticle physics, neutrino physics and cosmology, it was the occasion to share latest findings, innovative concepts and future outlooks among experts of the field.

Isabel Goos at Neutrino 2024 (credits Neutrino2024)

During the conference, Isabel Goos, KM3NeT’s researcher at the University of Paris Cité, was awarded one of the four prizes for the best-poster award. In her poster, titled “KM3NeT’s sensitivity to the next core-collapse supernova”, she discusses how individual multi-PMT optical modules of KM3NeT can be used as standalone detectors for the detection of low-energy neutrinos from Core Collapsed Super Novae. It has been selected among 460 accepted posters, of which 319 eligible for this acknowledgement.

KM3NeT joins in congratulating Isabel on her great achievement!

In total, KM3NeT presented 17 posters, covering topics including neutrino astronomy, neutrino oscillations, dark matter & exotics, cosmic-ray studies and technologies for neutrino physics.

KM3NeT at Neutrino2024.

In addition, four members of the KM3NeT Collaboration had a plenary talk: João Coelho, who discussed the latests results from KM3NeT; Maurizio Spurio, debating open problems in neutrino astrophysics;  Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, contributing on the present and future of high-energy neutrino astronomy, and Jürgen Brunner presenting future detectors for atmospheric neutrinos.

Neutrino 2026 will be held at the University of California – Irvine. Looking forward to sharing our advancements also on that occasion!

The KM3NeT Collaboration reunited in Texel for its spring meeting

23 June 2024 – KM3NeT has met, in Texel (The Netherlands) and online, for its spring Collaboration meeting, hosted by NIOZ, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

The meeting brought together collaborators in order to review the status of the ongoing analyses, Monte Carlo simulations and calibration efforts, for both the ARCA and ORCA detectors, and prepare exciting contributions to the Neutrino 2024 Conference.

During the week, the progress of detector construction was discussed, celebrating the achievement of assembling the 1,500th DOM. Additionally, plans for upcoming sea campaigns were refined.

Furthermore, Antoine Kouchner has been elected chair of the KM3NeT Institute Board, taking over from Uli Katz. The full Collaboration joins in thanking Uli for his outstanding work and wishes the best of luck to Antoine for the incoming endeavors!

The meeting was also the opportunity to welcome the new members of the Collaboration. Both the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (Bonn, Germany) and the Khalifa University (United Arab Emirates) have been endorsed as Full Members, with Yuri Y. Kovalev and Satyendra Thoudam as PIs respectively.  Kristina Giesel from ECAP Erlangen (Germany) joined as a new Associated Member. Welcome to all of you!

It was wonderful to engage in fruitful discussions about recent scientific developments and to see the Collaboration continue to grow.

Thanks a lot to NIOZ for the hospitality and to the whole local team for the organization!

The next meeting is scheduled for late autumn in online mode.

ORCA enlarged with four new detection units

15 June 2024 – A new marine operation took place in the last week for enlarging the ORCA deep-sea neutrino telescope.

Taking advantage of a spot of good weather of 48 hours, four new detection units were added to the apparatus.

For each of such units, the following steps were required: installation on the bottom of the sea, connection to the apparatus, functionality check, unfurling from the launcher vehicle, final test to check the functionality post-unfurling and recovery of the launcher vehicle. During the operation one acoustic beacon, which was in need of refurbishment, was recovered from the bottom of the sea.

The campaign was performed with two ships and a deep-sea ROV. A team onshore performed all needed tests on the newly installed detection units.

After the new installations, ORCA now comprises 23 detection units; only one more detection unit is needed for completing all connections on the first of the submarine nodes of the apparatus.

Many thanks to all teams involved for this important step forward!

The deck of Castor-2 of Foselev Marine loaded with the new detection units awaiting deployment, at dawn, while starting up the campaign.

 

A detection unit splashing to start its journey to the bottom of the sea.

 

Into the blue!

 

 

Three new KM3NeT papers

Recently, three KM3NeT papers were accepted by peer-reviewed scientific journals and came on line.

Note, that KM3NeT has an open science policy which means that all papers can be read open access, i.e. without a paywall.

 

1. Following up gravitational wave events – a scientific paper. In the paper ‘Searches for neutrino counterparts of gravitational wavesfrom the LIGO/Virgo third observing run with KM3NeT‘ we report the results of a neutrino follow-up study of gravitational wave sources detected by the LIGO-Virgo interferometers in 2019–2020.

The search focuses both on MeV neutrinos and high-energy neutrinos. No significant excess was observed for any of the sources. Upper limits on the neutrino emission from individual sources and the typical emission from binary black hole mergers were computed and compared with the constraints from other neutrino telescopes.

JCAP04(2024)026, DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2024/04/026

In the picture upper limits on the total neutrino fluence for both analyses in comparison with the results of other observatories.

 

2. Differential Sensitivity of ARCA – a scientific paper. In the paper titled ‘Differential Sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ARCA Detector to a Diffuse Neutrino Flux and to Point-like Source Emission: Exploring the Case of Starburst Galaxies‘, for the first time, KM3NeT presents the expected differential sensitivity of the full ARCA detector for both diffuse and point-like neutrino fluxes.

In particular, this study is applied to Starburst Galaxies, demonstrating that the ARCA detector, when completed, can trace TeV neutrinos from these sources. For instance, with ARCA it will be possible to discriminate between different astrophysical components in NGC 1068 after 3 years of data taking, strengthening the observations of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

In the pictures: (left) the sensitivities of the ARCA detector after 10 years of operation as a function of neutrino energy, compared to measurements of the IceCube neutrino observatory; (right) the discovery neutrino flux as a function of operation time.

Astroparticle Physics, Volume 162, DOI: 10.1016/j.astropartphys.2024.102990

 

3. Powering optical modules – a technical paper. The optical modules in the KM3NeT neutrino telescope in the deep Mediterranean Sea receive electrical power from the control station on the shore. An electronics board – dubbed the Power Board – in each optical module is described in the paper ‘The Power Board of the KM3NeT Digital Optical Module: design, upgrade, and production’. The board arranges powering individual components in the module at different voltage levels. The Power Board has been subjected to rigorous test to ensure reliable operation in the deep sea for more than a decade.

In the picture a photo of the Power Board with the various DC/DC converters generating the voltages needed.

Electronics 2024,13(11), 2044, DOI: 10.3390/electronics13112044

 

In addition, three new pre-prints were stored on the arXiv and submitted to the relevant scientific journals for peer-review:

  • Astronomy potential of KM3NeT/ARCA, arXiv:2402.08363, submitted to EPJ-C

  • Atmospheric muons measured with the KM3NeT detectors in comparison with updated numeric predictions, arXiv: 2403.11946, submitted to EPJ-C

  • Search for Neutrino Emission from GRB 221009A using the KM3NeT ARCA and ORCA detectors, arXiv: 2404.05354, submitted to JCAP

We will report on these once they are accepted for print by the journals.

An exciting Collaboration meeting in Bologna

5 March 2024 – The KM3NeT Collaboration met again, in Bologna and online, in February.

With so many data analyses ongoing, the meeting gave the opportunity to discuss a harvest of new results. As plans are being prepared for next massive sea campaigns to be performed for ARCA and ORCA this year, there was a lot to discuss also on the construction side.

During the meeting the recipients of the Giorgos Androulakis Prize, Agustín Sánchez Losa and Riccardo Bruno, were announced.

An application by UCLouvain to upgrade their membership from observer to full member was endorsed. Drexel University (Philadephia, US) and the University of Würzburg (Germany) were welcomed as observers, with the PIs Naoko Kurahashi Neilson and Sara Buson, respectively. Cássius Anderson Miquele de Melo from the Universidade Federal de Alfenas, Brasil joined as a new Associated Member. Welcome to all of you!

We also had some cheerful activities, with several colleagues participating in social games that lasted the full week. That was also an opportunity to meet new people from different institutes.

It was great to discuss of frontier science at the oldest University in Europe – many thanks to the local team for a superb organization!

The next Collaboration meeting will be in June in Texel, in the Netherlands.

 

Agustín Sánchez Losa and Riccardo Bruno awarded the Giorgos Androulakis Prize

5 March 2024 – During the recent KM3NeT collaboration meeting, in Bologna last month, the awardees of the second edition of the Giorgos Androulakis Prize were announced.

With the prize, KM3NeT recognises “exceptional contribution to the KM3NeT project that has a particularly high impact on the success or progress of KM3NeT”.

The prize is named after Giorgos Androulakis, the late KM3NeT Quality Manager, in order to commemorate Giorgos’ dedication to the project. The prize is awarded in two categories: Early-Career Scientists and Technicians & Engineers.

The winners of the second edition of the KM3NeT Giorgos Androulakis Prize are:

  • in the category Early Career Scientists: Agustín Sánchez Losa of IFIC, “for his long-standing, diverse and essential contributions to the KM3NeT detector calibration“
  • in the category Technicians and Engineers: Riccardo Bruno of INFN Catania, “for his dedicated, leading and vital contributions to the KM3NeT project, in particular in: setting up the software tool for functional and acceptance tests for WWRS DOMs; developing the White Rabbit system; construction of the WWRS DOM prototypes; his support of the integration teams producing WWRS DOMs“

Congratulations to Agustín and Riccardo! With many thanks for your dedication to KM3NeT.

The winners of the Giorgos Androulakis Prize, Agustín Sánchez Losa (left) and Riccardo Bruno (right), receiving the prize from the KM3NeT spokesperson, Paschal Coyle

Paper alert

20 November 2023 – Recently, KM3NeT published on the arXiv pre-prints of two new papers:

1 – Embedded software of the KM3NeT Central Logic Board

This KM3NeT technical paper describes the embedded software running in the data acquisition of the telescope. Located in the deep Mediterranean Sea, the hardware of the telescope is not directly accessible. The implemented software facilitates remote management of the deployed hardware and safe reconfiguration of firmware. It runs on the central electronics board of each optical module of the KM3NeT detectors. The central logic board coordinates the readout of all equipment inside the module and manages the communication and data transmission over optical fibers connecting the module to the control station on shore.

Read the details at arXiv.2308.01032

(Accepted for publication in Computer Physics Communications)

 

2 – KM3NeT neutrino follow-up of gravitational wave sources

In this paper the KM3NeT Collaboration reports the results of a neutrino follow-up study made with ORCA data of gravitational wave sources detected by LIGO–Virgo in 2019-2020. The search focuses both on MeV neutrinos and high-energy neutrinos. No significant excess was observed for any of the sources.

Upper limits on the neutrino emission from individual sources and the typical emission from binary black hole mergers are computed and compared with the constraints from other neutrino telescopes.

Since May 2023, the Collaboration is performing real-time follow-ups of the GW triggers detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA in their fourth observing run, with both ORCA and ARCA detectors with much larger instrumented volumes than in the previous searches.

In the figure the comparison of 90% upper limits on the neutrino fluence from gravitational wave sources for ANTARES, IceCube, Super-Kamiokande and KM3NeT.

 

Read the details at arXiv.2311.03804

The paper has been submitted for publication after peer-review.

 

KM3NeT/ARCA enlarged to 28 Detection Units

10 October 2023 – An important two-week marine operation has been successfully carried out at the KM3NeT ARCA site, offshore Capo Passero, Sicily in September.

The campaign was performed with the Optimus Prime, equipped with a FUGRO underwater vehicle (ROV). The ship set sail from Malta on Monday, 11 September and came back to the port at the end of the operation on Thursday, 23 September.

The operation was among the last activities of PACK, a project supported by MUR (the Italian Ministry of University and Research) for the period 2019-2023, aimed at enlarging the deep-sea telescope and at enhancing the KM3NeT facilities in Bari, Caserta and Naples.

Soon after completing the operation, the commissioning of the enlarged ARCA telescope was started.

ARCA now comprises 28 detection units, which are altogether equipped with 504 Digital Optical Modules, with a total of more than 15,000 photomultipliers.

Deployment of a detection unit from Optimus Prime
The start of the unfurling of a detection unit as seen from the ROV control room onboard the Optimus Prime.
Tests of a newly deployed detection unit from the shore station in Portopalo di Capo Passero