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Session 62 - Workshop on the Future of Antarctic Astrophysics - II.
Topical, Oral session, Wednesday, June 10
Presidio,
The AMANDA collaboration has successfully deployed a 10-string array (AMANDA-B10) of 302 photomultiplier tubes at the South Pole at a depth of 1.5 to 1.9 km. The array has been used to measure the optical quality of the ice, reconstruct tracks from high-energy cosmic ray muons, and measure the energy of electromagnetic cascades. Simulations and early analyses of data indicate that the array has an effective area of \sim 10,000 m^2 for throughgoing neutrino-induced muons, with an angular resolution of 2.5^\circ and good rejection (> 10^5) of down-going cosmic ray muons. I will describe the design and construction of the detector, the methods used to simulate its performance and to reconstruct muon tracks, and the results to date; I will include a progress report on the ongoing analysis of a full year of data (500 GB) from the detector. Finally, I will discuss future work; this will include a description of the AMANDA-II array, already begun with three strings in 1997-98, which will have an effective area of up to \sim 10^5 m^2 and angular resolution of \sim 1^\circ.
