Experimental HEP Seminar

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory:
Status, Initial Results and Future Prospects

Darren Grant

University of Alberta

The IceCube neutrino observatory is the world's largest high-energy neutrino telescope, utilizing the deep Antarctic ice as the Cherenkov detector medium. On December 18, 2010 the last of the observatory's 86 strings of optical detectors was deployed, completing the approximate cubic-kilometer array. With the addition of a new low-energy extension, called DeepCore, the observatory has very high neutrino detection efficiency for energies ranging from ~10 GeV to a few EeV. I will present the most recent results using data from the partial detector including searches for neutrinos from astrophysical sources, such as gamma ray bursts, and world-leading constraints on large-mass spin-dependent dark matter scattering and annihilation cross-sections. The potential of DeepCore for observations of neutrino sources in the inner Milky Way, searches for dark matter, and neutrino physics, will also be discussed.