Professor Brian Clark
University of Maryland
Chasing the Ghost Particle: Neutrino Astrophysics with IceCube
Location: 1080 Physics Research Building
Faculty Host: Kaeli Hughes
Abstract: High energy (> TeV) neutrinos are unique messengers to the distant, high-energy universe. As chargeless and weakly interacting particles, neutrinos arrive from cosmic distances, giving us insights to the nature of astrophysical accelerators like black holes and gamma ray bursts. In this talk, I will discuss the ongoing work of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect and study extraterrestrial neutrinos. I will review how the IceCube detector, which is a cubic kilometer instrument buried deep at the South Pole, detects high energy neutrinos. I will then discuss the latest physics results of the detector, including efforts to measure the so called “extremely high energy” neutrino flux, expected to occur above ~10 PeV.
