Optimising Underwater Neutrino Telescopes for All-Flavour Point Source Sensitivity

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Morton-Blake, Iwan, Zhang, Fuyudi, Chang, Qichao, Hao, Shuhua, Huang, Weilun, Mei, Hualin, Tian, Wei, Wang, Yingwei, Xiang, Xin, Xu, Donglian
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Morton-Blake, Iwan
Zhang, Fuyudi
Chang, Qichao
Hao, Shuhua
Huang, Weilun
Mei, Hualin
Tian, Wei
Wang, Yingwei
Xiang, Xin
Xu, Donglian
author_facet Morton-Blake, Iwan
Zhang, Fuyudi
Chang, Qichao
Hao, Shuhua
Huang, Weilun
Mei, Hualin
Tian, Wei
Wang, Yingwei
Xiang, Xin
Xu, Donglian
contents High-energy neutrino astronomy has advanced rapidly in recent years, with IceCube, KM3NeT, and Baikal-GVD establishing a diffuse astrophysical flux and pointing to promising source candidates. These achievements mark the transition from first detections to detailed source studies, motivating next-generation detectors with larger volumes, improved angular resolution, and full neutrino-flavour sensitivity. We present a performance study of large underwater neutrino telescopes, taking the proposed TRIDENT array in the South China Sea as a case study, with a focus on comparing the performance of various detector configurations against the TRIDENT baseline design. Both track-like events primarily from muon neutrinos, which provide precise directional information, and cascade events from all flavours, which offer superior energy resolution, diffuse-source sensitivity, and all-sky flavour coverage, are included to achieve a balanced performance across source types. The time to discover potential astrophysical sources with both track- and cascade-like events is used as the figure of merit to compare a variety of detector design choices. Our results show that, for a fixed number of optical modules, simply enlarging the instrumented volume does not inherently lead to improved performance, while taller strings can provide modest gains across all detector channels, within engineering constraints. Distributing dense clusters of strings over a large volume is found to generally worsen discovery potential compared to the baseline layout. Finally, the optical properties of the sea-water emerge as the key factor dictating the optimisation of detector layout, highlighting the need for in-situ measurements and early deployment of optical modules to guide the final array configuration.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_24395
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimising Underwater Neutrino Telescopes for All-Flavour Point Source Sensitivity
Morton-Blake, Iwan
Zhang, Fuyudi
Chang, Qichao
Hao, Shuhua
Huang, Weilun
Mei, Hualin
Tian, Wei
Wang, Yingwei
Xiang, Xin
Xu, Donglian
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Experiment
High-energy neutrino astronomy has advanced rapidly in recent years, with IceCube, KM3NeT, and Baikal-GVD establishing a diffuse astrophysical flux and pointing to promising source candidates. These achievements mark the transition from first detections to detailed source studies, motivating next-generation detectors with larger volumes, improved angular resolution, and full neutrino-flavour sensitivity. We present a performance study of large underwater neutrino telescopes, taking the proposed TRIDENT array in the South China Sea as a case study, with a focus on comparing the performance of various detector configurations against the TRIDENT baseline design. Both track-like events primarily from muon neutrinos, which provide precise directional information, and cascade events from all flavours, which offer superior energy resolution, diffuse-source sensitivity, and all-sky flavour coverage, are included to achieve a balanced performance across source types. The time to discover potential astrophysical sources with both track- and cascade-like events is used as the figure of merit to compare a variety of detector design choices. Our results show that, for a fixed number of optical modules, simply enlarging the instrumented volume does not inherently lead to improved performance, while taller strings can provide modest gains across all detector channels, within engineering constraints. Distributing dense clusters of strings over a large volume is found to generally worsen discovery potential compared to the baseline layout. Finally, the optical properties of the sea-water emerge as the key factor dictating the optimisation of detector layout, highlighting the need for in-situ measurements and early deployment of optical modules to guide the final array configuration.
title Optimising Underwater Neutrino Telescopes for All-Flavour Point Source Sensitivity
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Experiment
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.24395