AMANDA
spends the long Antarctic winter searching for neutrinos in hopes of
revealing the enigmatic sources of the highest energy cosmic rays. High-energy
neutrinos passing through the Earth interact with South Pole ice to
produce faint bursts of blue light. AMANDA (Antarctic Muon and Neutrino
Detector Array) is an array of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and diagnostic
devices buried in the ice. A hot water drilling technique developed
by glaciologists was used to deploy the array. Kilometer long coax cables
connect the array to data acquisition equipment at the ice surface.
For experiment calibration, Laser Science, Inc. nitrogen lasers buried
deep in the polar ice deliver light pulses to the PMTs.
 The
first string of 80 PMTs (AMANDA-A) was successfully deployed on Christmas Eve
1993 and has been operating without failure since. Larger arrays, AMANDA-B and
AMANDA-II, were assembled in following seasons. Six new strings were installed
during the 1999-2000 Antarctic summer season, completing the AMANDA-II array with
modules ranging from 1300 to 2400 meters in depth. Due to the startling success
of the AMANDA collaboration, funding is being sought for IceCube, a full cubic
kilometer neutrino detector in the ice. The importance of this research is heightened
by the recent discovery that neutrinos oscillate and therefore must have mass.
AMANDA
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