The objectives of the Astroparticle Physics Experimental Group are directly related to the ANTARES and KM3NeT neutrino telescopes. Neutrino astronomy offers a new way of looking at the Universe with remarkable advantages over other messengers. Gamma rays interact with radiation and matter on their way from the astrophysical sources that produce them. Cosmic rays are also absorbed and, being charged particles, are deflected by galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields. Neutrinos, on the other hand, travel virtually unchanged from their origin to us because they are neutral and interact weakly. 

One of the fundamental goals of neutrino astronomy is to identify the sources of the high-energy cosmic rays that we have been observing for decades without having yet elucidated their origin. Another goal is the detection of dark matter, which makes up 85% of the matter in the Universe and of which one of the few things we know is that it is not made of Standard Model particles. Finally, another goal is to measure the mass hierarchy of neutrinos, one of the remaining unresolved questions about neutrinos. ANTARES is a neutrino telescope located at a depth of 2500 metres in the Mediterranean Sea, near the French coast. It consists of 900 photomultipliers (PMTs) that detect Cherenkov light induced by the interaction of high-energy neutrinos in the vicinity of the detector. It has been taking data since 2008 in its full configuration. The future KM3NeT detector will have two configurations The larger (one cubic kilometre) ARCA configuration will focus on the search for astrophysical sources of neutrinos. The denser ORCA configuration (1.8 Mton) has as its main objectives to measure the mass hierarchy of neutrinos and to elucidate the nature of dark matter. 

In addition to participating in the analyses of neutrino astronomy, dark matter and neutrino properties, the Astroparticle Experiment Group is involved in the construction of the KM3NeT time calibration system and in the development of the control cards for the data acquisition system.

Contributors

• Christoph Tönnis - Spanish National Research Council (Madrid) 

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