IceCube Experiment at the South Pole
Professors Doug Cowen and Tyce DeYoung lead to a group of postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduates performing research with the
IceCube experiment at the South Pole. A recent article published by their collaboration was featured in Physical Review Letters "This Week in Physics"
website:
In the search for dark matter, among the most interesting candidates is the neutralino, a neutral particle, predicted in supersymmetric extensions of the
standard model, which interacts only weakly with other matter. Since the neutralino is expected to be stable, it may be possible to find particles that are
relics of the early universe."
"Theorists have predicted that the sun's gravity can trap neutralinos, which could collect in its center and then annihilate each other. The standard-model
particles created by these annihilations could subsequently decay, producing high-energy neutrinos that could escape from the sun and be detected on earth.
Based on searches for these neutrinos, the IceCube Collaboration has now reported in Physical Review Letters new limits on neutralino annihilations in the sun."
(Stanley Brown, Physical Review Letters) More....