Deployment of the IceCube Upgrade Camera System in the SPICEcore hole

TL;DR

The paper reports on deploying and testing a camera and LED system in the SPICEcore hole to observe optical properties of Antarctic ice, aiding the IceCube Upgrade's neutrino detection accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a new camera and LED system for IceCube, tested in a deep ice-core hole to improve understanding of ice optical properties for neutrino detection.

Findings

Successful deployment of the camera system in a 1.7 km deep ice-core hole

Effective observation of optical properties in Antarctic ice

System performance validated for future IceCube Upgrade use

Abstract

IceCube is a cubic-kilometer scale neutrino telescope located at the geographic South Pole. The detector utilizes the extremely transparent Antarctic ice as a medium for detecting Cherenkov radiation from neutrino interactions. While the optical properties of the glacial ice are generally well modeled and understood, the uncertainties which remain are still the dominant source of systematic uncertainties for many IceCube analyses. A camera and LED system is being built for the IceCube Upgrade that will enable the observation of optical properties throughout the Upgrade array. The SPICEcore hole, a 1.7 km deep ice-core hole located near the IceCube detector, has given the opportunity to test the performance of the camera system ahead of the Upgrade construction. In this contribution, we present the results of the camera and LED system deployment during the 2019/2020 austral summer season as part of a SPICEcore luminescence logger system.