Neutrino AMANDA

The current experimental situation for this indirect detection method is summarized in Figure 16(a) for neutrinos from WIMPs in the Sun, and Figure 16(b) for neutrinos from WIMPs in the Earth. The figures show the current best bounds from the MACRO, Baksan, Super-Kamiokande, and AMANDA... 

Ahlen, S. P, Avignone, F. T., Brodzinski, R. L., Drukier, A. K., Gelmini, G. Spergel, D. N. 1987. Limits On Cold Dark Matter Candidates From An Ultralow Background Germanium Spectrometer, Phys. Lett. B195, 603 Ahmad, Q. R., et al. [SNO Collaboration] 2002. Direct evidence for neutrino flavor transformation from neutral-current interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Phys. Rev. Lett.89, 011301 Ahrens, J., et al. [AMANDA Collaboration] 2002. Limits to the muon flux from WIMP annihilation in the center of the earth with the AMANDA detector, Phys. Rev. D66, 032006... 

In the South Pole the ICECUBE detector is extending AMANDA to the km3 size and it is planned to be completed within year 2010, being probably the fist km3 telescope running. In the Mediterranean Sea ANTARES is going to install a 0.1 km2 neutrino telescope demonstrator, NESTOR has deployed... 

Search for GRB Neutrinos. The AMANDA GRB search for correlated v emission relies on temporal (typically less than 100 s in duration) and angular information provided by BATSE and other satellites in the IPN network (Hurley et al., 1998). Initial search strategies for data collected between 1997-2000 (Hardtke et al., 2003) and for individual GRBs (Stamatikos et al., 2004), have assumed nearly concurrent emission within the duration of prompt gamma-ray emission (Tgo). A new search (Kuehn et al., 2004) also scans for neutrino emission prior to the Tgo start time. No excess was observed for either search method above the expected background from atmospheric v and poorly reconstructed... 

AMANDA has yet to observe an extraterrestrial neutrino source, but she has demonstrated the cost-effectiveness and robustness of the technique. The detector is very versatile it addresses many different neutrino physics subjects and sets the most stringent upper limits on Galactic and extragalactic neutrino fluxes. The improved search for diffuse fluxes, which has ruled out several predictions, along with the extended four-year search for point sources has started to constrain the enormous parameter space that exist in many models of neutrino production. The reported experimental limits on the diffuse neutrino flux are less than an order of magnitude above the Waxman-Bahcall bound ( Waxman and Bahcall, 1999). As more of the data on tape is analyzed, AMANDA sensitivities will continue to improve. This is a very exciting time in neutrino astronomy and we look forward to neutrino astrophysics with next generation of neutrino telescopes. 

---