Recent results from IceCube on neutrinos and cosmic rays

Abstract

Encompasing a volume of ~1 km^3 of glacial ice at the South Pole, IceCube is currently the worlds largest neutrino detector. It consists of 5160 optical modules on 86 strings in a depth between 1450m and 2450m, as well as 324 optical modules arranged in 81 stations on the surface to detect charged cosmic rays. A large amount of data has already been acquired with smaller configurations throughout the installation period. Using this data the atmospheric neutrino spectrum in the northern hemisphere has been measured up to 100 TeV. No point sources have been identified in a set of more than 10^5 neutrino candidates from both hemispheres. Searches for transient sources have set stringent limits on neutrino emission from gamma-ray bursts, and are now accompanied by an extensive neutrino-triggered follow-up program. A very large statistics of cosmic ray events has revealed an anisotropy in the cosmic ray flux on the 10^-3 level in the 10-100 TeV range. While no sources of extra-terrestrial neutrinos have been found yet, the physics results obtained so far illustrate the very good performance of the detector.