AMANDA
Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array
http://amanda.berkeley.edu/
Welcome to the AMANDA home page!
AMANDA is a detector being constructed at the South Pole, whose purpose is to observe high-energy (~ 1 TeV or 10^12 electron volt) neutrinos from astrophysical point sources. Strings of widely spaced photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are placed into deep water-drilled holes in the South Polar ice cap. High energy neutrinos coming up through the earth will occasionally interact with ice or rock and create a muon; such a muon emits Cherenkov light when passing through the array, and it can be tracked by measuring the arrival times of these Cherenkov photons at the PMTs.
We successfully deployed 216 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and several diagnostic devices on 6 strings during the 1996-97 Antarctic summer season (Nov. 1996 - Feb. 1997). This completed the AMANDA-B detector, which consists of 302 PMTs on 10 strings at depths of 1500-2000 meters, and should have an effective detection area of approximately 10,000 m^2, based on Monte Carlo simulations. This detector has run for more than a year, and the 530 GBytes of data acquired during 1997 has now come back from the South Pole on tape. We are now in the process of analyzing this data. Go here or here for WWW-viewable technical papers.
During the 1997-98 season, we began the construction of AMANDA-II, which will have an effective area several times higher than AMANDA-B. Three strings were installed with modules that range from 1300 to 2400 meters in depth, and these will provide information on the optical properties of the polar ice over this large depth range and act as the first three strings of the new detector. We have completed AMANDA-II during the current Antarctic season (Nov. 1999 - Feb. 2000) with the addition of six new strings.
Who We Are
Here is the list of collaboration
members.
Latest manuscripts
We have
papers available with more detailed information on the current status of
AMANDA and the status of the field of neutrino astronomy.
Detector Schematic
Here is a
schematic view of the experiment showing locations of the strings.
PICTURES!
EVENTS!
Here are some
events. This is real data, not Monte Carlo, and has just been updated
with a very cool animated GIF of an event!
Gone Fishing
Here is a nontechnical (and very colorful and personal) history of AMANDA up
to 1996 --
"Ice Fishing for Neutrinos" by
Francis Halzen.
Penguins
The AMANDA logo
is available
as a GIF picture
or a gzipped Postscript file.
AMANDA Monte Carlo simulation software
RAVEN,
the Monte Carlo package from the University of Wisconsin;
SIEGMUND, the code package maintained by DESY/Zeuthen.
AMANDA internal documents (private)
Here is the
link to AMANDA internal documents; you must be a member of the
collaboration and have the correct username and password to access
this link.
and by
