Speaker
Description
IceCube is actively working on a two-phased upgrade program. The IceCube 7-string Upgrade construction is underway: the detector instrumentation, from DOMs to cables and software, is being prepared for the 2025/26 South Pole field season when all of that is planned to come together to form a functioning detector 2700 m below the surface, in fewer than three months. It will provide unprecedented sensitivity to atmospheric neutrinos at a threshold of 3 GeV. It will also allow to refine the calibration of IceCube. Surface detectors are planned to maintain and improve the IceTop array.
In the meantime, the collaboration is actively working on the IceCube-Gen2 program. A Technical Design Report has been completed. The scope of the wide band-neutrino facility, 120 strings, a cosmic ray detector, and a large radio array covering TeV to EeV energies will improve the sensitivity to point sources by a factor of five. I will also discuss how challenges of construction at the South Pole will be met.
