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P. B. Price (University of California at Berkeley)
High energy (E > 100 GeV) neutrino astrophysics, still a virtually unexplored frontier, has great discovery potential for particle astronomy, particle physics, cosmology, and even gravitational physics. The Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), with an effective area of 10,000 square meters for TeV neutrinos traveling along its vertical axis, is now recording ~100 neutrino-induced muons per year, predominantly of atmospheric origin. IceCube (effective area = 1 square kilometer) at the South Pole will use extraterrestrial neutrinos to
* probe the origin of cosmic ray nuclei, the nature of gamma ray bursts, and the physical processes in the central engines of active galaxies;
* search for point sources of TeV neutrinos and for annihilation products of cold dark matter in the sun and earth;
* monitor the sky for Galactic supernovae and other cataclysmic phenomena.
The talk will focus on AMANDA, IceCube, and the astronomical questions they may answer.