3/19 12:30 Dr. Karolin Hymon (AS) POLARIS: A Sparse Radial Neutrino Telescope for the Pacific Ocean (R521, 5F, General Building II, Nat'l Tsing Hua Univ.)
******** CTCD/NTHU HEP Seminar ********
Speaker ：Dr. Karolin Hymon (AS)
Title ：POLARIS: A Sparse Radial Neutrino Telescope for the Pacific Ocean
Time ：12:30-13:30, Thursday, 2026/3/19
Place ：R521, 5F, General Building II, Nat'l Tsing Hua Univ.
Host ： Prof. Kingman Cheung (NTHU) & Prof. Norihiro Iizuka (NTHU)
Abstract:
IceCube has established the existence of a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux and achieved first detections of individual sources, including evidence of emission from the active galaxy NGC 1068 and neutrinos from the Galactic plane. Yet these represent only a small fraction of the total flux — the origin of the majority of astrophysical neutrinos remains unknown, and unambiguous point source identification at the 5σ level remains elusive. I will present POLARIS, a novel sparsely instrumented radial neutrino telescope concept for the Pacific Ocean, optimized for high-energy track-like events to maximize effective volume while minimizing deep-ocean instrumentation costs. Using the Prometheus simulation framework, I will discuss the detector's reconstruction and background rejection capabilities, and its sensitivity to point sources and the diffuse flux in the TeV–PeV range. POLARIS is designed as a cost-effective intermediate-scale detector, bridging the gap between currently operating telescopes such as IceCube and KM3NeT and next-generation projects like TRIDENT and IceCube-Gen2.
Speaker ：Dr. Karolin Hymon (AS)
Title ：POLARIS: A Sparse Radial Neutrino Telescope for the Pacific Ocean
Time ：12:30-13:30, Thursday, 2026/3/19
Place ：R521, 5F, General Building II, Nat'l Tsing Hua Univ.
Host ： Prof. Kingman Cheung (NTHU) & Prof. Norihiro Iizuka (NTHU)
Abstract:
IceCube has established the existence of a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux and achieved first detections of individual sources, including evidence of emission from the active galaxy NGC 1068 and neutrinos from the Galactic plane. Yet these represent only a small fraction of the total flux — the origin of the majority of astrophysical neutrinos remains unknown, and unambiguous point source identification at the 5σ level remains elusive. I will present POLARIS, a novel sparsely instrumented radial neutrino telescope concept for the Pacific Ocean, optimized for high-energy track-like events to maximize effective volume while minimizing deep-ocean instrumentation costs. Using the Prometheus simulation framework, I will discuss the detector's reconstruction and background rejection capabilities, and its sensitivity to point sources and the diffuse flux in the TeV–PeV range. POLARIS is designed as a cost-effective intermediate-scale detector, bridging the gap between currently operating telescopes such as IceCube and KM3NeT and next-generation projects like TRIDENT and IceCube-Gen2.