Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at South Pole Station Antarctica, is the world's largest neutrino detector. Optimized for neutrino energies between a few hundred GeV and tens of PeV, it is the premier facility for the study of high-energy neutrinos and indirect cosmological dark matter searches. In 2008 the original design for IceCube was augmented with a low-energy extension, called DeepCore, that reduced the threshold for the observatory to approximately 10 GeV and initiated an Antarctic-based particle physics program focused on neutrino oscillation measurements and indirect dark matter searches. The IceCube and DeepCore detector arrays are operating with greater than 99% efficiency and the data analyses are reaching full sensitivity with high impact results including world-leading indirect dark matter searches, globally competitive neutrino oscillation measurements and searches for new physics using high energy neutrino interactions. Building on these successes, the IceCube Upgrade was recently approved for funding. This adds seven strings of densely packed detectors that will greatly enhance the neutrino oscillation measurements and extend the indirect dark matter searches to lower masses. Future upgrade plans include IceCube-Gen2 which targets the highest energy neutrinos leading to greater sensitivity to new physics Beyond the Standard Model. The Canadian IceCube program is lead by five faculty members at the University of Alberta, Queen's University and Simon Fraser University. This is a leading group within the collaboration in all aspects of the on-going data analyses for the full energy range accessible by the detector. The group's activities include novel developments in calibrations, new reconstruction algorithms and advanced techniques in the Monte Carlo simulations, designed to reduce the primary detector systematic uncertainties. Our high-level physics analyses are primarily focused on measurements of atmospheric neutrino oscillations near 20 GeV, the atmospheric neutrino flux, indirect dark matter searches, and searches for new physics using high-energy neutrinos. Recognition by the international IceCube collaboration of the Canadian contributions has come through current appointments of Yanez as co-convener of the Neutrino Oscillations working group and Moore as the co-leader of the TFT board. In addition, our PDF Hignight co-convenes the Systematics and Reconstruction working group. Requested in the proposal is funding to maintain the current core IceCube analysis activities, to continue the development of the future detector upgrades. The current IceCube Canada groups include an NSERC supported postdoctoral fellow, 2 continuing PhD graduate students, 1 MSc student and 3 undergraduate researchers. Support for additional graduate and undergraduate researchers is requested as well as travel expenses, to facilitate the group's role in this unique international collaboration, and common fund contributions.