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IN RETROSPECT

Ten years of IceCube

Nature Reviews Physics volume 3, page 307 (2021)Cite this article

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Sunk deep into the ice of the South Pole lies a huge neutrino detector, IceCube. Completed in 2011, IceCube searches for neutrinos coming from astrophysical sources. Because neutrinos hardly interact with the inter-stellar medium, neutrino astronomy can provide new insights into astrophysical phenomena that are not available from electromagnetic observations. IceCube is part of the world-wide network of multi messenger astronomy instruments. IceCube data is also of interest to high-energy particle physicists because neutrinos generated by astrophysical sources have significantly higher energies than those achievable in particle accelerators on Earth.

Despite the huge challenges of working in such a remote location, Antarctica was chosen as the site for IceCube as it offered a huge volume of pure, uniform ice. In addition, other neutrino detectors were all in the northern hemisphere, so Antarctica provided a view of the southern sky. Over the course of seven years, 86 holes were drilled into the ice, reaching the bedrock at a depth of up to 2500 m. Into each hole, a vertical string lined with 60 photodetectors was lowered into the ice. In total, the experiment contains 5160 extremely sensitive photodetectors, capable of detecting energies up to the order of exaelectronvolts (1018 eV).

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  • IceCube Collaboration, Aartsen, M. G. et al. Evidence for High-Energy Extraterrestrial Neutrinos at the IceCube Detector. Science 342, 1242856 (2013)

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  1. Nature Reviews Physics https://www.nature.com/natrevphys/

    Ankita Anirban

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  1. Ankita Anirban
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Correspondence to Ankita Anirban.

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Anirban, A. Ten years of IceCube. Nat Rev Phys 3, 307 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00315-4

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