KM3NeT - KM3NeT

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!

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

The KM3NeT/ORCA neutrino detector is coming online

On 22 September 2017, after a two day long sea operation, the first detection unit of the ORCA neutrino telescope came online. This marks an important milestone of the scientific and technological endeavour of the international KM3NeT Collaboration.

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Best poster at CNNP 2017

26 October 2017 – The KM3NeT Collaboration congratulates Giovanna Ferrara of INFN/LNS and the University of Catania, Italy with the award of the best poster presented at the Conference for Neutrino and Nuclear Physics, CNNP2017, in Catania, Italy.

With the poster ‘First results of the KM3NeT/ARCA detector‘, she presents the preliminary results of detailed studies comparing Monte Carlo predictions and the measurements collected in about a year of data taking with two ARCA detection units. In particular, she shows that the measured dependency of the flux of down going muon particles with the depth in the sea is in agreement with prediction. The results confirm that the ARCA detection units are well calibrated.

Giovanna presented the poster on behalf of the KM3NeT Collaboration. Co-author was Simone Biagi, INFN/LNS, Catania, Italy

The awarded poster.
The award ceremony. Giovanna Ferrara second from the right.

 

KM3NeT meets in Marseille

This week,  2-6 October 2017, researchers and engineers of  ANTARES and KM3NeT met in Marseille, France for their yearly Fall meeting. The Collaboration meeting was organised by the colleagues of the ANTARES/KM3NeT team of the CPPM research institute for particle and nuclear physics. A week full of science and technology reports and discussions including the  presentation of the first data of the recently deployed first detection unit of the ORCA detector offshore the coast of Toulon, France.

Colleagues of the IceCube Collaboration and from the GVD Lake Baikal Collaboration will join during the weekend for the yearly MANTS meeting of the GNN Global Neutrino Network.

KM3NeT and Industry

At the Hannover Messe, 24-28 April 2017, the Dutch KM3NeT team proudly presented the KM3NeT technology.  The KM3NeT exhibition stand was part of the Dutch Pavilion of this large industrial show and attracted the interest of the Dutch minister of research Sander Dekker (photo). The Hannover Messe offered a unique opportunity to share with a broad industrial audience the technical challenges and production opportunities of building the KM3NeT telescope in the deep seas of the Mediterranean.

(see also the coverage of Deutsche Welle)

KM3NeT supports the March for Science

On 22 April 2017 scientists, concerned citizens and science lovers will march to celebrate science and to stress the need for support and safeguarding of the global scientific community.

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KM3NeT and ANTARES at IPHC in Strasbourg

photo-meeting-antares-km3net-strasbourg-2016 28 September 2016 – This week,  researchers of the ANTARES and KM3NeT Collaborations meet in Strasbourg, France to discuss neutrino physics and the progress of building the KM3NeT detectors ARCA and ORCA. The meeting is hosted by the ANTARES/KM3NeT research group of Thierry Pradier at the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert CURIEN (IPHC). At the end of the week the researchers will move to Mainz, Germany to meet the colleagues of the IceCube and Baikal neutrino telescopes at the annual GNN MANTS meeting to exchange the detailed knowledge about the analysis techniques and discuss future steps in neutrino physics and astronomy.