The birth of high-energy neutrino astronomy: A personal history of the DUMAND project

Abstract

DUMAND is a project to build a Deep Underwater Muon And Neutrino Detector offshore near the island of Hawaii. At present under construction, it hopes to inaugurate the field of high-energy neutrino astronomy. Potential sources of high-energy neutrinos are listed, and estimates of neutrino intensity given. The paper is concerned with the physics, technology, and history of the project, which started informally in 1973. It survived through a series of summer conferences until it was funded as a feasibility study in 1979 and established in the Hawaii DUMAND Center, at the University of Hawaii. Over a dozen collaborating groups have contributed to the successful construction and operation of DUMAND I, the SPS or Short Prototype String, which established the benign character of the ocean environment and demonstrated its suitability for DUMAND II, a 216-phototube array now under construction. DUMAND II, recently funded, will have more than 20 times the area of any existing detector and a mass of almost 2 million tons; this size is minimal for the intensities and cross sections anticipated. The project became feasible-both technically and financially-through important technical advances in data transmission via fiber optics, high-speed computer technology, special photomultiplier tubes made by Hamamatsu and Philips, remotely controlled undersea vehicles with manipulative abilities, and many deep-sea electronic and oceanographic components. It is supported by an international collaboration with 15 collaborating institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. It is scheduled to install a three-string test array (TRIAD) by late 1992, and the complete nine-string array is scheduled for operation in late 1993.

Flavor composition and energy spectrum of astrophysical neutrinos

“…Several experimental approaches for the detection are at present being developed. The concept that is in the most advanced stage is a large volume (cubic Kilometer) ice or water Cherenkov detector, with photon detectors distributed inside the volume, as originally proposed by the Dumand group [40] and now in different stages of development at the South Pole [41,42], in the Baikal lake [43] and in the mediterranean sea [44,45,46]. Several other alternative techiques are also being developed [47], that includes radio [48,49], acoustic and air shower [50,51] detection methods.…”

Astrophysical origins of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays

“…The largest pilot experiments (∼ 0.1 km in size) are: the now defunct DUMAND (Deep Underwater Muon and Neutrino Detector) experiment [497] in the deep sea near Hawaii, the underwater experiment in Lake Baikal [498], and AMANDA (Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array ) [499] in the South Pole ice. Next generation neutrino telescopes aim towards an active volume in the range of 1 km 3 of water.…”

Observation and Characterization of a Cosmic Muon Neutrino Flux From the Northern Hemisphere Using Six Years of Icecube Data

“…The proposed method was the detection of up-going muons as a signature of a charged-current (CC) muon neutrino interaction below the detector. Soon it was realized that the expected astrophysical fluxes are small and cubic-kilometer-sized detectors would be needed to accomplish the goal, see e.g., Roberts (1992). The construction of large Cherenkov detectors by instrumenting optically transparent natural media, i.e., deep oceans, lakes, and glaciers with photo-sensors (Belolaptikov et al 1997;Andres et al 2000;Ageron et al 2011) proved to be a key concept.…”