Neutrino Astrophysics with the ANTARES Telescope

This thesis is devoted to ANTARES, the first underwater neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean sea. As the main scientific analysis, a search for high-energy neutrino emission from the region of the Fermi bubbles has been performed using data from the ANTARES detector. A method for the background estimation using off-zones has been developed specially for this measurement. A new likelihood for the limits calculation which treats both observations in the on-zone and in the off-zone in the similar way and also includes different systematic uncertainties has been constructed. The analysis of 20082011 ANTARES data yielded a 1.2 excess of events in the Fermi bubble regions, compatible with the no-signal hypothesis. For the optimistic case of no energy cutoff in the flux, the upper limit is within a factor of three of the prediction of the purely hadronic model based on the measured gamma-ray flux. The sensitivity improves as more data are accumulated (more than 65% gain in the sensitivity is expected once 20122016 data are added to the analysis).

Nominated as an outstanding Ph.D. thesis by the University of Genoa, Italy Presents an overview of modern high-energy neutrino astrophysics Outlines the best neutrino flux limits for the Fermi bubble regions Provides an overview of the statistical approaches for the analyses with the off-zones Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Auteur
2006 2008 Master thesis, Moscow State University. KM3NeT detector simulations.
2009 2011 INFN fellow, Genoa. Supernova detection with ANTARES.
2011 2013 PhD thesis, Genoa & Paris VII. Fermi bubbles analysis with the ANTARES data. Neutrino mass hierarchy study with ORCA.
2014 2015 INFN Postdoc, Laboratori Nazionali del Sud. KM3NeT detector construction & tests. KM3NeT sensitivity to Dark Matter.

Contenu
Introduction.- The ANTARES Detector.- Simulation of the ANTARES Detector Work.- Event Reconstruction and Data Selection.- Fermi Bubbles Analysis.- Conclusions.