Development of an Early Alert System to Identify Astrophysical Sources of High-Energy Neutrinos
Course Credit?
Yes - PH495Paid Position?
NoFaculty
Marcos SantanderDescription
The IceCube neutrino observatory (http://icecube.wisc.edu/) is a cubic-kilometer, glacial ice neutrino detector located at the geographic South Pole. IceCube identifies high-energy neutrinos from the universe at a rate of about 10 per year, but the sources of these neutrinos remains unknown. A possible way to identify the sources is to correlate the position of the neutrinos in the sky with known astrophysical objects or with observations taken by ground- or space-based telescopes. The goal of this project is to develop software that will automatically compile available observations of a particular point in the sky every time a neutrino from that direction is detected. In this way, were a neutrino found to be correlated with, for instance, a distant galaxy this information could be used by astronomers to point their telescopes in that direction and search for activity that could be related with the neutrino emission. For this work, the student(s) will code a python program that is capable of running continuously waiting for an alert to come from IceCube and generate plots and tables automatically. The student(s) will perform this work in collaboration with colleagues from the international IceCube collaboration, which consists of more than 300 people from about 50 institutions (UA among them) in 12 countries. The position is not paid at first, but depending on performance and availability of funds it will be converted into a paid, longer-term position.
Special Skills
Some familiarity with Python would be useful.