Studying Bioluminescence Flashes with the ANTARES Deep Sea Neutrino Telescope

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new statistical method leveraging underwater neutrino telescope data to reconstruct and localize bioluminescent organisms in the deep sea, providing novel insights into bioluminescence without disturbing marine life.

Contribution

The study develops a mathematical and statistical framework to analyze bioluminescence using neutrino telescope data, enabling non-invasive localization of deep-sea organisms.

Findings

Reliable modeling of bioluminescent flashes achieved

Localization accuracy depends on telescope configuration

First precise localizations of bioluminescent organisms with neutrino data

Abstract

We develop a novel technique to exploit the extensive data sets provided by underwater neutrino telescopes to gain information on bioluminescence in the deep sea. The passive nature of the telescopes gives us the unique opportunity to infer information on bioluminescent organisms without actively interfering with them. We propose a statistical method that allows us to reconstruct the light emission of individual organisms, as well as their location and movement. A mathematical model is built to describe the measurement process of underwater neutrino telescopes and the signal generation of the biological organisms. The Metric Gaussian Variational Inference algorithm is used to reconstruct the model parameters using photon counts recorded by the neutrino detectors. We apply this method to synthetic data sets and data collected by the ANTARES neutrino telescope. The telescope is located 40 km off the French coast and fixed to the sea floor at a depth of 2475 m. The runs with synthetic data reveal that we can reliably model the emitted bioluminescent flashes of the organisms. Furthermore, we find that the spatial resolution of the localization of light sources highly depends on the configuration of the telescope. Precise measurements of the efficiencies of the detectors and the attenuation length of the water are crucial to reconstruct the light emission. Finally, the application to ANTARES data reveals the first precise localizations of bioluminescent organisms using neutrino telescope data.