Meeting Information

IceCube: Neutrinos at the Bottom of the Earth

February 27, 2019
American Center for Physics
College Park, MD

Date: February 27, 2019: please note, this is the 4th Wednesday

Speaker: Erik Blaufuss, University of Maryland 

Topic: IceCube: Neutrinos at the Bottom of the Earth

Time and Location: 1:00 p.m., with Q&A to follow in a 1st floor conference room at the American Center for Physics (www.acp.org), 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD-- off River Rd., between Kenilworth Ave. and Paint Branch Parkway.

Abstract: IceCube is the world’s largest neutrino detector, instrumenting a cubic- kilometer of Antarctic glacial ice at the geographic South Pole. Using signals from the more than 5000 sensors buried ~ 2km below the surface, IceCube is able to measure high-energy neutrinos above ~100 GeV and perform astro-particle observations of the Universe. Astrophysical neutrinos are expected to be created in the birthplaces of high-energy cosmic rays, and point the way back to these elusive sources. Since IceCube's detection of a diffuse flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos in 2013, identifying their sources has been the primary science goal. This talk with will present the latest measurements of the astrophysical neutrino flux and highlight results from real time alerts generated by astrophysical neutrino detections that trigger rapid follow-up observations by the community. In particular, a neutrino alert in September, 2017 triggered world-wide astronomical observations, and provide evidence that the Fermi-LAT identified blazar TXS 0506+056 is the first multi-messenger source producing neutrinos, as well as an accelerator of cosmic rays.

Biography: Erik Blaufuss is a research scientist in the Physics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. He’s been studying neutrinos his entire career, from looking for hints of neutrino oscillations in neutrinos from the Sun at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan, to using neutrinos as an astrophysical messenger to study the most extreme objects in the Universe. He help build the IceCube online data filtering systems that operates at the South Pole, and now leads the realtime alert effort within the IceCube collaboration. He received his BS Physics, from the  University of California, Irvine and his PhD Physics, from Louisiana State University.