Nature publication IceCube in Antarctica proves 60-year-old physics prediction with high-energy particle from the Universe

VUB radio technology is the future for a search for cosmic neutrinos

Thursday, March 11, 2021 — In 1960, Nobel Prize winner Sheldon Glashow predicted a process within the Standard Model, the most important model of particle physics. The theory describes the interaction of an antineutrino with an electron producing a new particle. However, no particle accelerator on Earth, not even the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, is able to make this process happen because it requires extremely high particle energy. With (anti)neutrinos from the cosmos, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has now been able to observe such a process for the first time in history and thus confirms this important prediction. The result was published on 10 March in the renowned journal Nature. “Our universe produces particles with energies that we can never achieve on Earth. This clearly shows the importance of astroparticle physics in fundamental research at the highest energy scales. And not only that: the technologies developed for such research, such as data processing or radio technology, have applications in the whole of society,” says Nick van Eijndhoven, leader of the VUB group on astroparticle physics. Among other things, VUB analyses data and develops innovative detection techniques for IceCube based on radio signals.

Neutrinos and antineutrinos, the antimatter twin of a neutrino, are ghostly subatomic particles that can be found in the most extreme environments in the universe. On 8 December 2016, for example, a high-energy particle raced from space to Earth at a speed approaching the speed of light and carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep in the ice cap at the South Pole, it collided with an electron and produced a particle that rapidly decayed into a shower of secondary particles. This interaction was captured by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a huge telescope buried in Antarctica’s glacier. IceCube had observed a Glashow resonance, a phenomenon predicted in 1960 by Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow.

Glashow first proposed this resonance in 1960. In a paper, he predicted that an antineutrino could react with an electron to produce a yet undiscovered particle – if the antineutrino had the right energy. When that particle, the W boson, was discovered in 1983, it turned out to be very heavy. The Glashow resonance would require a neutrino with an energy almost 1,000 times greater than that which CERN’s Large Hadron Collider can produce. In fact, no constructed particle accelerator on earth can produce a neutrino with that much energy.

But our universe does have such natural accelerators. Supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies and other extreme cosmic events can generate particles with energies that are impossible to reach on Earth. Such a phenomenon was likely responsible for the 6.3 PeV antineutrino that reached IceCube in 2016. Glashow, now professor emeritus of physics at Boston University, stresses the need for more detections of Glashow resonance events. “To be absolutely sure, we would need to see another such event at exactly the same energy as the one observed,” he says. “So far there is one, and one day there will be more.”

VUB aims to detect more cosmic neutrinos with innovative radio technology

Since IceCube became fully operational in May 2011, the observatory has detected hundreds of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. But the 2016 antineutrino is only the third neutrino with an energy above 5 PeV detected by IceCube. It is also the first time that the measurements have been able to separate neutrinos from antineutrinos, which has important implications for future measurements. “There are some properties of astrophysical neutrinos that we cannot measure, such as the physical size of the accelerator and the magnetic field strength in the acceleration region,” said Tianlu Yuan, a principal analyst. “If we can determine the ratio of neutrino to antineutrino, we can investigate these properties.”

In the future, the IceCube Collaboration aims to detect even more high-energy particles and make decisive measurements of the neutrino-to-antineutrino ratio. VUB’s IceCube team is taking a lead in this, under the guidance of Nick van Eijndhoven and Krijn de Vries. They are currently developing an innovative detection technique, based on radio signals produced during the process of a neutrino interaction.

International collaboration

The IceCube consortium recently announced an upgrade of the detector to be implemented in the coming years, as the first step to IceCube-Gen2. What this research mainly shows is the value of international cooperation. IceCube is operated by more than 400 scientists, engineers and employees from 53 institutions in 12 countries, collectively known as the IceCube Collaboration. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is internationally funded, with significant contributions from the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS & FWO) in Belgium.

“Detection of a particle shower at the Glashow resonance with IceCube,” IceCube Collaboration: R. Abbasi et al. Nature

Contact

Nick van Eijndhoven, radio detection lead -VUB

Professor of physics

nick@icecube.wisc.edu

Krijn de Vries, radar detection lead - VUB

Professor of physics

krijn.de.vries@vub.be

Madeleine O’Keefe, IceCube press

press@icecube.wisc.edu

001-608-515-3831