Letter of Intent: The Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU)

Journal article

The Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU) is a proposed low-energy in- fill extension to the IceCube Observatory. With detection technology modeled closely on the successful IceCube example, PINGU will feature the world’s largest effective volume for neutrinos at an energy threshold of a few GeV, enabling it to reach its chief goal of determining the neutrino mass hierarchy (NMH) quickly and at modest cost. PINGU will be able to distinguish between the normal and inverted NMH at 3σ significance with an estimated 3.5 years of data. With its unprecedented statistical sample of low energy atmospheric neutrinos, PINGU will also have highly competitive sensitivity to νµ disappearance, θ23 octant and maximal mixing, and ντ appearance. PINGU can also extend the search for solar WIMP dark matter into the region currently favored by some direct dark matter experiments. At the lower end of the energy range, PINGU can use neutrino tomography to perform the first-ever direct measurement of the composition of the Earth’s core. With its increased module density, PINGU will improve IceCube’s sensitivity to galactic supernova neutrino bursts and enable it to extract the neutrino energy spectral shape.

Authors: IceCube Collaboration; Sarkar, S

• Publication date: 2014-01-09
• Keywords: supernovae; neutrinos; neutrino hierarchy; cosmic rays; dark matter; neutrino oscillations