Paris, November 14, 2003

Antares: An underwater neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea

Inauguration of the Antares scientific station

Claudie Haigneré, French Minister for Research and New Technologies and Guido Possa, Vice Minister Delegate for Research, representing Letizia Moratti, Italian Minister for Education, Universities and Research inaugurated the Antares scientific station on November 18, 2003 at La Seyne-sur-Mer (Var), France, in the presence of Michel Vauzelle, President of the Council for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region, Horace Lanfranchi, president of the General Council for the Department of Var, Dr. Arthur Paecht, Mayor of La Seyne-sur-Mer and first Vice-President of the General Council for the Department of Var,  Michel Laurent, President of the University of the Mediterranean, Domitien Debouzie, President of the University Claude Bernard – Lyon I, Bernard Bigot, French High Commisioner for Atomic Energy, Enzo Iarocci, President of INFN, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Bernard Larrouturou, Director General of CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Jean-François Minster, President and Director General of IFREMER, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.

Initiated seven years ago, the Antares project is the fruit of collaboration among several European laboratories with the aim of studying very high-energy cosmic neutrinos using an underwater telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The telescope will begin operation in 2006.

Cosmic neutrinos are elementary particles which interact very weakly with matter and which can consequently travel enormous distances in the Universe without absorption by intergalactic material. They represent an exciting means for studying the far Universe that is complimentary with more familiar forms of electromagnetic radiation. They can also be used to indirectly study the nature of the hidden mass in the Universe.

Given their very weak rate of interaction with matter, very large mass detectors are required to detect them, which must be shielded other forms of cosmic radiation which continuously bombard the Earth and which represent a significant background. The deep sea offers natural shielding and an ideal material for the detection of neutrinos. In the Antares experiment, a thousand photo-detectors are submerged in the Mediterranean Sea at a site south of the island of Porquerolles (Var), chosen for the quality of its water at a depth of – 2400m. The sensitive photo-detectors are oriented toward the sea floor to detect light emitted by particles produced by neutrinos that have traversed the Earth and interacted with it near the sea floor. This configuration will allow the detector to study the sky in the Southern Hemisphere, including the galactic centre - a site of numerous intense, energetic phenomena. Such large detector arrays may properly be termed ‘neutrino telescopes’.

The Antares programme foresees the construction of a detector of 0.1 km²; prelude to a future telescope of 1 km² made up of a three-dimensional matrix instrumenting an effective volume of 1 km³. Such a detector should be capable of identifying a sufficient number of cosmic neutrino events per year to identify the principal sources of high-energy neutrinos in the universe, thereby opening the era of neutrino astronomy.

Antares will also be a multidisciplinary laboratory in the deep Mediterranean of interest for oceanology, marine biology and seismology.

For the design and installation of the detector, the Antares project benefits from the know-how and competence of numerous local organisations specialised in marine technology.

Antares is a collaboration of 14 European laboratories that have been attracted by the quality of the local scientific and technological infrastructure. The collaboration consists of French, British, Italian, German, Spanish, Netherlands and Russian teams, and includes more than 200 scientists. In France, the team includes researchers, engineers and technicians from CEA (DSM/Dapnia) and CNRS (IN2P3 and INSU), from universities – Toulon and Var (La Garde), Mediterranean (Marseille), Haute-Alsace (Mulhouse), Denis Diderot Paris 7 (Paris) and Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg) as well as experts in deep-sea technology from Ifremer. The Marseille Particle Physics Centre (CPPM) serves as the local host institute for the collaboration. The Antares project is funded by contributions from CEA (DSM/Dapnia) and CNRS/IN2P3; from the regions of Alsace and Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur, from the Department of Var and the city of La Seyne-sur-Mer; from the European Union and from six participating countries (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom).

Press Contacts:

Françoise Auribault, +33 1.46.48.21.00, francoise.auribault@ifremer.fr

Magali Damoiseaux,  +33 4.91.82.72.28, damoiseaux@cppm.in2p3.fr

Laetitia Louis,  +33 1.44.96.49.88, martine.hasler@cnrs-dir.fr

Pascal Newton, + 33 1.40.56.20.97, pascal.newton@cea.fr

For more information: http://antares.in2p3.fr