Speaker
Dr
Salvatore Viola
(INFN - LNS)
Description
KM3NeT is a future km3-scale underwater neutrino telescope that will be installed in
the Mediterranean Sea. The telescope will detect the Cherenkov light, induced by the
secondary charged particles produced in the neutrino interactions, by means of an
array of photomultiplier tubes installed in optical modules. The optical modules will
be hosted on-board semi-rigid detection units (DUs), several hundreds meters high,
anchored on the seabed. Their positions and movements will be determined through an
acoustic positioning system (APS) composed of an auto-calibrating long-baseline (LBL)
of acoustic transceivers, placed at the bottom of each DU, and an array of acoustic
receivers, arranged along the DUs. An additional LBL of autonomous emitters will be
deployed out of the detector field to help the positioning in the first stages of the
detector installation. The use of the auto-calibrating LBL of transceivers will allow
the acoustic measurement of distances between acoustic transceivers with an accuracy
of few centimeters avoiding cost-effective measurements of distances through ROV.
Known the sound velocity along the water column, the geometrical disposition of the
DUs is obtained via geometrical triangulation, measuring the time of flight of the
LBL signals to cover the transceiver-receiver distance. All transceivers and
receivers will be driven by the detector master clock and the acoustic emission
parameters (frequency, amplitude, trigger time, repetition rate) will be settable
from shore. In this work, the R&D activities of the SMO and KM3NeT-Italia teams for
the development of the APS for KM3NeT are presented.
Primary author
Dr
Salvatore Viola
(INFN - LNS)
