Systematic effects and analysis in IceCube

Neutrinos are uniquely unaffected as they travel through space, and are therefore excellent messenger particles with a potential to bring new discoveries, and better understanding of the high energy Universe.

The group in Stockholm has played a central role in neutrino observations at the South Pole (the AMANDA and IceCube projects) since almost 30-years.

In a 2017 breakthrough, the IceCube collaboration reported the first convincing association of high energy neutrinos with an astronomical object, the blazar TXS 0506+056 which was in an active state of gamma-ray emission.

These results are attracting a great deal of interest; many searches for other sources have been made but, as yet, TXS 0506+056 is uniquely significant.

The IceCube Upgrade is an on-going project, adding instrumentation to improve the sensitivity of IceCube at the lower end of its energy range, and to provide additional calibration of the ice and detector system, applicable also to the ten years of data already taken.The project here aims to improve the performance of IceCube, particularly in the field of searches for neutrino sources, by investigation and correction of possible biases caused by the detector geometry and its description, and by observation and characterization of the re-frozen ice around the detector modules of the IceCube upgrade, by means of a camera system being developed in Stockholm.