MRI: Research Infrastructure: Track #2 Development of Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment Trigger System

Recent observations by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory have provided evidence for the first two candidate sources, powered by supermassive black holes in other galaxies, as well as the emission of a high-energy flux within our own Milky Way galaxy. The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), a leading next-generation neutrino observatory located deep in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington State, is under development to advance this nascent field of neutrino astrophysics.

This award will support a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Drexel University, Michigan State University, and the University of Chicago to develop and construct a start-of-the-art trigger system for the P-ONE observatory that will collect and process all the P-ONE data. This award will provide unique skill development in advanced scientific electronics and data acquisition for early career scientists, including students and postdoctoral researchers.

The new observatory is a planned integral part of the global multi-messenger astrophysical observations program that includes many NSF-funded instruments, and it is developed in partnership with international collaborators. More broadly, the data facilitated by this trigger system will provide continuous monitoring of environmental conditions and biological processes in an unprecedentedly large volume of the deep ocean, providing novel input to the oceanography and marine biology communities.

A central challenge in neutrino astrophysics is identifying discrete sources and associating them with astronomical objects. This is currently limited by the angular resolution of existing neutrino telescopes, such as IceCube. By leveraging the optical properties of deep-sea water and modern electronics, P-ONE can improve angular resolution by a factor of at least 4, resulting in better sensitivity by the same factor.

The development of the trigger system under this award will provide the crucial link between raw detector data and analysis, delivering all scientific results from the detector, that is essential for realizing the scientific goals of the P-ONE. The trigger system that will be developed under this award is central to the future full cubic-km-scale P-ONE observatory, ensuring a central role for the US and will assure US leadership in the emerging field of high-energy neutrino astrophysics.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.