Neutrino Astronomy (Rapporteur Talk)

TL;DR

This report summarizes the progress in neutrino astronomy, highlighting the detection of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, efforts to identify their sources, and developments in next-generation detectors following IceCube's groundbreaking observations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive status update on neutrino astronomy, emphasizing recent experimental achievements and future detector developments post-IceCube discoveries.

Findings

Detection of high-energy cosmic neutrinos confirmed by IceCube

No point sources of neutrinos have been conclusively identified

Next-generation detectors are being developed for improved sensitivity

Abstract

This report is the write-up of a rapporteur talk on neutrino astronomy given at the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2015. Here, selected contributions on the neutrino astronomy from the total of 40 talks and 90 posters presented in NU sessions at the 34th ICRC are summarized in the attempt of providing a status report on this rapidly glowing new field. The field of neutrino astronomy has recently experienced a "phase transition" since the first observation of high energy cosmic neutrinos. Extensive efforts have been made to identify the origin of the neutrino flux observed in the 100 TeV to PeV region, from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. In addition, the search for neutrino fluxes beyond the observed level has become increasingly important for further understanding the origin of the observed cosmic-ray up to $10^{20}$ eV. Although the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the only experiment currently measuring this neutrino flux, its initial measurements have been confirmed via analysis using several independent detection channels. Further, there have been a number of developments in the search for neutrino point sources, while no successful observations have yet been reported. Following the IceCube observations, a large number of studies of next-generation neutrino detectors, including up-scaled underground Cherenkov neutrino detectors and Cherenkov radio neutrino detectors, have been reported.