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Ignacio Taboada receives over $1.5 Mio to build P-ONE’s sensor trigger system

Ignacia Taboada has been awarded over $1.5 million in funding through a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build P-ONE’s sensor trigger system, which will record and identify sources of light as they are captured by the telescope’s sensors. Taboada is a professor at the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), a member of the P-ONE collaboration, and the current spokesperson of the IceCube collaboration.

Ignacio Taboada and his team from Georgia Tech will develop the sensor trigger system of P-ONE.

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) will be built off the coast of Washington State in the Cascadia Basin with global collaboration. In addition to Taboada, the US PIs include Naoko Kurahashi Neilson of Drexel University, Nathan Whitehorn and Tyce DeYoung of Michigan State University, and Alexandra Rahlin of the University of Chicago. 

Finding the right medium for capturing astrophysical particles

Despite the challenges involved in building an underwater telescope, the collaboration was drawn to the underwater location because, as Tabadoa puts it, “the characteristics of the seawater mean that we could identify more individual sources better than IceCube can if we can build a detector of the same size.” Capturing astrophysical particles is a balance of finding the right medium for the sensors: the medium’s density contributes to how many particles are captured. 

While an open-air observatory would be possible, Taboada explains that “air is about 1,000 times less dense, so it means that we would get 1,000 times fewer neutrinos interacting in the detector — and neutrino detections are very, very rare.” Using a medium like ice or seawater maximizes the possibility of capturing these particles. 

Light can travel longer distances in ice …

Ice and seawater also present unique challenges. “The ice in Antarctica is extremely transparent,” Taboada says. This means that when a photon enters the ice, it can travel a very long distance within that ice. “But it doesn't travel in a straight line,” he says. Instead, the particle ricochets and scatters, deviating from its original path.

… but is less scattered in water 

This makes it more difficult to determine exactly where the particle has come from — a key aspect of astronomical observations. “In comparison, light entering seawater scatters much less," Taboada says. “It always travels in a straight line.” Because of this, neutrino directions are determined more precisely in seawater than in ice. 

Key to capturing these particles is the trigger system that Taboada will build with this new funding. That component will collect data around interesting events, which are seen as light to the system. But there are many sources of light in the ocean that aren’t from astronomical phenomena. “It's not something that can be trivially predicted,” says Taboada. “It's a very complicated situation, and you have to adapt the trigger to various amounts of background light.”

Light from bioluminescent sources or from radioactivity needs to be filtered 

For example, there’s bioluminescence to consider. Some sources, like fish or small organisms, can move around independently, while others, like bioluminescent plankton, might instead react to turbulence. The trigger system will need to identify and filter out all of these sources. “Seawater also has a lot of potassium,” Taboada adds. “One of the isotopes of potassium is radioactive, and the optical sensors can catch light from that.”

Once the trigger system recognizes and captures the event, the data is sent to the mainland, where computers will leverage machine and deep learning to determine exactly what the sensor has captured. “It's a process of gathering and analyzing interesting data,” Taboada says, similar to looking into a night sky and differentiating shooting stars, constellations, satellites, and planes. 

P-ONE will have an improved angular resolution and sensitivity

Because P-ONE is one of the first projects of its kind, the research team plans to initially install six or seven lines of instrumentation across the seafloor. “That is rather small,” says Taboada, “but it will demonstrate how to build the instrument and how to operate it.” 

“P-ONE has the eventual objective of being similar to IceCube in size,” he adds. “But it will be a northern hemisphere detector (meaning it can ‘see’ different parts of the sky than IceCube), and should have significantly better angular resolution and sensitivity.” And while P-ONE’s location will provide views that IceCube can’t, the effort also has the potential to provide a new perspective of the ocean floor. The system will continuously monitor the deep ocean at an unprecedented scale, capturing data about environmental conditions and biological processes, key information for oceanographers and marine biologists — all while furthering the field of neutrino astrophysics.

Acknowledgment 

P-ONE is a collaboration between the following organizations: Ocean Networks Canada; University of Victoria; University of Alberta; Department of Physics, Queen's University; Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University; TRIUMF; Department of Physics, Technical University of Munich; Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics; Collaborative Research Centre 1258 (SFB1258) at TUM funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); European Southern Observatory; Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe Universität Frankfurt; GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung; Max Planck Institute for Physics; Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Science; University College London; Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Drexel University; University of Chicago. 

For the original Georgia Tech news by Selena Langner, please see “Scientists Awarded $1.5 M for Next-Gen Underwater Neutrino Observatory”

Ignacio Taboada receives over $1.5 Mio to build P-ONE’s sensor trigger system

Ignacia Taboada has been awarded over $1.5 million in funding through a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build P-ONE’s sensor trigger system, which will record and identify sources of light as they are captured by the telescope’s sensors. Taboada is a professor at the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), a member of the P-ONE collaboration, and the current spokesperson of the IceCube collaboration.

Ignacio Taboada and his team from Georgia Tech will develop the sensor trigger system of P-ONE.

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) will be built off the coast of Washington State in the Cascadia Basin with global collaboration. In addition to Taboada, the US PIs include Naoko Kurahashi Neilson of Drexel University, Nathan Whitehorn and Tyce DeYoung of Michigan State University, and Alexandra Rahlin of the University of Chicago. 

Finding the right medium for capturing astrophysical particles

Despite the challenges involved in building an underwater telescope, the collaboration was drawn to the underwater location because, as Tabadoa puts it, “the characteristics of the seawater mean that we could identify more individual sources better than IceCube can if we can build a detector of the same size.” Capturing astrophysical particles is a balance of finding the right medium for the sensors: the medium’s density contributes to how many particles are captured. 

While an open-air observatory would be possible, Taboada explains that “air is about 1,000 times less dense, so it means that we would get 1,000 times fewer neutrinos interacting in the detector — and neutrino detections are very, very rare.” Using a medium like ice or seawater maximizes the possibility of capturing these particles. 

Light can travel longer distances in ice …

Ice and seawater also present unique challenges. “The ice in Antarctica is extremely transparent,” Taboada says. This means that when a photon enters the ice, it can travel a very long distance within that ice. “But it doesn't travel in a straight line,” he says. Instead, the particle ricochets and scatters, deviating from its original path.

… but is less scattered in water 

This makes it more difficult to determine exactly where the particle has come from — a key aspect of astronomical observations. “In comparison, light entering seawater scatters much less," Taboada says. “It always travels in a straight line.” Because of this, neutrino directions are determined more precisely in seawater than in ice. 

Key to capturing these particles is the trigger system that Taboada will build with this new funding. That component will collect data around interesting events, which are seen as light to the system. But there are many sources of light in the ocean that aren’t from astronomical phenomena. “It's not something that can be trivially predicted,” says Taboada. “It's a very complicated situation, and you have to adapt the trigger to various amounts of background light.”

Light from bioluminescent sources or from radioactivity needs to be filtered 

For example, there’s bioluminescence to consider. Some sources, like fish or small organisms, can move around independently, while others, like bioluminescent plankton, might instead react to turbulence. The trigger system will need to identify and filter out all of these sources. “Seawater also has a lot of potassium,” Taboada adds. “One of the isotopes of potassium is radioactive, and the optical sensors can catch light from that.”

Once the trigger system recognizes and captures the event, the data is sent to the mainland, where computers will leverage machine and deep learning to determine exactly what the sensor has captured. “It's a process of gathering and analyzing interesting data,” Taboada says, similar to looking into a night sky and differentiating shooting stars, constellations, satellites, and planes. 

P-ONE will have an improved angular resolution and sensitivity

Because P-ONE is one of the first projects of its kind, the research team plans to initially install six or seven lines of instrumentation across the seafloor. “That is rather small,” says Taboada, “but it will demonstrate how to build the instrument and how to operate it.” 

“P-ONE has the eventual objective of being similar to IceCube in size,” he adds. “But it will be a northern hemisphere detector (meaning it can ‘see’ different parts of the sky than IceCube), and should have significantly better angular resolution and sensitivity.” And while P-ONE’s location will provide views that IceCube can’t, the effort also has the potential to provide a new perspective of the ocean floor. The system will continuously monitor the deep ocean at an unprecedented scale, capturing data about environmental conditions and biological processes, key information for oceanographers and marine biologists — all while furthering the field of neutrino astrophysics.

Acknowledgment 

P-ONE is a collaboration between the following organizations: Ocean Networks Canada; University of Victoria; University of Alberta; Department of Physics, Queen's University; Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University; TRIUMF; Department of Physics, Technical University of Munich; Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics; Collaborative Research Centre 1258 (SFB1258) at TUM funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); European Southern Observatory; Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe Universität Frankfurt; GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung; Max Planck Institute for Physics; Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Science; University College London; Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Drexel University; University of Chicago. 

For the original Georgia Tech news by Selena Langner, please see “Scientists Awarded $1.5 M for Next-Gen Underwater Neutrino Observatory”