Modulo C-XI, 2nd floor
Facultad de Ciencias UAM
CU Cantoblanco, 28049-Madrid

18-20 May, 2005

IceCube as a particle physics experiment
Francis L. Halzen
Wisconsin U., Madison

We will discuss the physics reach of the IceCube neutrino observatory when it will have collected a data set of order one million atmospheric neutrinos with energies in the 0.1 - 10,000 TeV range. We will briefly review how neutrino "telescopes" detect neutrinos, measure their energy and determine their flavor. We will present a description of the detector that can be used to simulate the detector's performance with relatively simple analytic methods. We subsequently review the wide variety of IceCube's science missions related to particle physics ranging from the search for dark matter to the identification of additional dimensions of space. We will quantitatively evaluate the potential of IceCube to study new physics beyond neutrino oscillations. Not surprisingly, because of the increased energy and statistics over present experiments, existing bounds on violations of the equivalence principle and of Lorentz invariance will be improved by over two orders of magnitude. The methods developed can be readily applied to search for other non- conventional physics associated with neutrinos.

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