Neutrino Observatories

Astrophysical neutrinos come from many kinds of sources and span many orders of magnitude in energy. Just as for photons, detection techniques vary with energy. I will start by discussing detection of "low energy" (solar and supernova) neutrinos, then will move upwards in energy (atmospheric and cosmic neutrinos), and then (if time) have a quick look at the exotic very high and very low ends of the natural neutrino spectrum.

General Neutrino Information

The Ultimate Neutrino Page has links having to do with many aspects of neutrino physics and astrophysics. Another of my favorite neutrino pages (primarily focusing on oscillation physics, but full of links to all sorts of neutrino-related things) is Maury Goodman's Neutrino Oscillation Industry page.

Solar Neutrinos (MeV)

John Bahcall's solar neutrino page has a wealth of information and links about solar neutrinos.
Here are links to home pages of existing and planned solar neutrino detectors.
The recently past, current and near future generation includes:
- The radiochemical detectors: Homestake (chlorine, USA), Gallex/GNO (gallium chloride, Italy), SAGE (liquid gallium, Russia).
- Super-Kamiokande (Super-K), a water Cherenkov detector in Mozumi, Japan.
- The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a heavy water detector in Sudbury, Canada.
- Borexino, a low energy threshold scintillator detector in Gran Sasso, Italy. KamLAND is a similar experiment which is using reactor neutrinos to probe solar neutrino oscillation physics (and which may have some direct sensitivity to solar neutrinos, too).
Information about the next generation of proposed solar neutrino detectors aiming for real-time detection of the low energy (but high flux) solar pp neutrinos can be found here.

Supernova Neutrinos (tens of MeV)

When a core collapse supernova occurs, only about 1% of the gravitational binding energy of the resulting neutron star goes into electromagnetic energy and kinetic energy of an expanding remnant; the rest goes into neutrinos. Many current detectors are sensitive to a burst of neutrinos from a supernova in our galaxy. Some links:

SN1987A for which 19 neutrinos were observed by Kamiokande II and IMB.
The SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS), a project I am involved in, which aims to provide an early warning of a galactic supernova to astronomers if a neutrino burst occurs.
My NeSS '02 talk on future supernova detection which gives an overview of both current and future supernova neutrino detectors.

Atmospheric Neutrinos (GeV)

The main detectors which observed atmospheric neutrinos and elucidated the atmospheric neutrino anomaly are Super-K, Soudan 2 (an iron calorimeter detector in Minnesota), and MACRO, (a detector with sensitivity to upward-going neutrino-induced muons in Gran Sasso, Italy.)

Cosmic Neutrinos (hundreds of GeV, TeV and beyond)

Detectors aiming to see very high energy neutrinos from such exotic objects as active galactic nuclei and gamma ray bursters generally take the form of long strings of phototubes viewing a very large volume of water or ice. The list includes:

AMANDA at the South Pole and its upgrade IceCube, the cubic kilometer array.
The Lake Baikal telescope in Russia.
NESTOR and Antares in the Mediterranean.

Detectors whose primary purpose is ultra high energy cosmic rays, yet which have some sensitivity to cosmic neutrinos via imaging of horizontal air showers are:

The Hi-Res and Telescope Array cosmic ray detectors in Utah.
The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina.
OWL, the OWL-AirWatch Mission (Orbiting Wide-angle Light-collectors), a future project.

Some Other Links

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics to neutrino detection pioneers Davis and Koshiba.
A proposed National Underground Laboratory.