Currently, an upgrade consisting of seven densely instrumented strings in the center of the volume of the IceCube detector with new digital optical modules (DOMs) is being built. On each string, DOMs will be regularly spaced with a vertical separation of 3 m between depths of 2160 m and 2430 m below the surface of the ice, which is a denser configuration compared to the existing DOMs of IceCube detector.

For a precise calibration of the IceCube Upgrade it is important to understand the properties of the ice, both inside and surrounding the deployment holes. LEDs and Camera systems, which are developed and produced at Sungkyunkwan university, are installed in every single DOM to measure these properties. For these calibration measurements, a new simulation framework, which produces expected images from various geometric and optical variables has been developed and images produced from the simulation are expected to be used to develop an analysis framework for the IceCube Upgrade camera calibration system and for the design of the IceCube Gen2 camera system.

The IceTop surface detector of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory measures extensive air showers (EAS). Coincident signals in both tanks of an IceTop station result primarily from the electromagnetic component of the EAS, and events which trigger at least 5 stations correspond to energies roughly above the knee, with an energy threshold and reconstruction behavior that changes over time as snow accumulates above the array. We present a status report of an analysis of ≥ 5-station events in IceTop from 2011-2021, which will be used to measure the all-particle spectrum of cosmic rays in the transition region from galactic to extragalactic sources up to EeV range, using updated simulations and improved treatments of snow attenuation. In particular, a snow model has been developed which takes the non-attenuating muon content of tank signals, as well as their saturation behavior, into account.

The IceCube realtime alert system has been operating since 2016. It provides prompt alerts on high-energy neutrino events to the astroparticle physics community. The localization regions for the incoming direction of neutrinos are published through NASA’s Gamma-ray Coordinate Network (GCN). The IceCube realtime system consists of infrastructure dedicated to the selection of alert events, the reconstruction of their topology and arrival direction, the calculation of directional uncertainty contours and the distribution of the event information through public alert networks. Using a message-based workflow management system, a dedicated software (SkyDriver) provides a representational state transfer (REST) interface to parallelized reconstruction algorithms. In this contribution, we outline the improvements of the internal infrastructure of the IceCube realtime system that aims to streamline the internal handling of neutrino events, their distribution to the SkyDriver interface, the collection of the reconstruction results as well as their conversion into human- and machine-readable alerts to be publicly distributed through different alert networks. An approach for the long-term storage and cataloging of alert events according to findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (FAIR) principles is outlined.

A precise understanding of the optical properties of the instrumented Antarctic ice sheet is crucial to the performance of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov array of 5,160 digital optical modules (DOMs) deployed in the deep ice below the geographic South Pole.

We present an update to the description of the ice tilt, which describes the undulation of layers of constant optical properties as a function of depth and transverse position in the detector. To date, tilt modeling has been based solely on stratigraphy measurements performed by a laser dust logger during the deployment of the array. We now show that it can independently be deduced using calibration data from LEDs located in the DOMs. The new fully volumetric tilt model not only confirms the magnitude of the tilt along the direction orthogonal to the ice flow obtained from prior dust logging, but also includes a newly discovered tilt component along the flow.

IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the cubic kilometer detector embedded in ice of the geographic South Pole, is capable of detecting particles from several GeV up to PeV energies enabling precise neutrino spectrum measurement. The diffuse neutrino flux can be subdivided into three components: astrophysical, from extraterrestrial sources; conventional, from pion and kaon decays in atmospheric Cosmic Ray cascades; and the yet undetected prompt component from the decay of charmed hadrons. A particular focus of this work is to test the predicted angular dependence of the atmospheric neutrino flux using an unfolding method. Unfolding is a set of methods aimed at determining a value from related quantities in a model-independent way, eliminating the influence of several assumptions made in the process. In this work, we unfold the muon neutrino energy spectrum and employ a novel technique for rebinning the observable space to ensure sufficient event numbers within the low statistic region at the highest energies. We present the unfolded energy and zenith angle spectrum reconstructed from IceCube data and compare the result with model expectations and previous measurements.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory instruments a cubic-kilometer of glacial ice and has been the first experiment to identify high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. There are two main morphologies of IceCube events: tracks and cascades. Tracks result from muons, while cascades result from particle showers induced by in-ice interactions. The directional reconstruction of cascades is less precise than that of tracks, which limits the sensitivity of astrophysical neutrino analyses with cascade events. In order to improve the directional reconstruction of cascade events, accurate ice modeling is essential. However, potential biases might exist in data stemming from unconstrained systematic uncertainties. In this work, feasibility studies to better understand the ice using a data-driven approach are performed, where photons that are likely to have been induced by the hadronic cascade part of muon neutrino charged-current interactions are categorized using probability density functions in time, distance and angle, and the reconstructed direction with this pseudo-cascade is compared with the track direction. In this proceedings, methodology and results are detailed and a path towards better understanding of the ice is discussed.

The D-Egg, (Dual optical sensors in an Ellipsoid Glass for Gen2) is one of the new optical modules designed for the coming IceCube Upgrade at the South Pole. With two 8-inch high-quantum efficiency photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) per module and improvements in overall design, D-Eggs offer an increased effective photodetection sensitivity that is 2.8 times larger than that of the current IceCube optical sensors. Mass production of over 300 D-Eggs has been completed, with all modules now undergoing Final Acceptance Testing (FAT) before deployment in the Antarctic ice. This involves detailed characterisation of each module at cold temperatures to collect valuable calibration data, as well as detect possible hardware related failures. While FAT is still on-going, current results indicate we will exceed the required 277 modules for deployment.

About 400 mDOMs (multi-PMT Digital Optical Modules) will be deployed as part of the IceCube Upgrade Project. The mDOM’s high pressure-resistant glass sphere houses 24 PMTs, 3 cameras, 10 flasher LEDs and various sensors. The mDOM mainboard design was challenging due to the limited available volume and demanding engineering requirements, like the maximum overall power consumption, a minimum trigger threshold of 0.2 photoelectrons (PE), the dynamic range and the linearity requirements.Another challenge was the FPGA firmware design, dealing with about 35 Gbit/s of continuous ADC data from the digitization of the 24 PMT channels, the control of a high speed dynamic buffer and the discriminator output sampling rate of about 1GSPS. High-speed sampling of each of the discriminator outputs at ~1 GSPS improves the leading-edge time resolution for the PMT waveforms. An MCU (microcontroller unit) coordinates the data taking, the data exchange with the surface and the sensor readout. Both the FPGA firmware and MCU software can be updated remotely.

After discussing the main hardware blocks and the analog frontend (AFE) design, test results will be shown, covering especially the AFE performance. Additionally, the functionality of various sensors and modules will be evaluated

The IceCube-Gen2 Neutrino Observatory is proposed to extend the all-flavour energy range of IceCube beyond PeV energies. It will comprise two key components: I) An enlarged 8 km³ in-ice optical Cherenkov array to measure the continuation of the IceCube astrophysical neutrino flux and improve IceCube’s point source sensitivity above ∼ 100 TeV; and II) A very large in-ice radio array with a surface area of about 500 km². Radio waves propagate through ice with a kilometer-long attenuation length, hence a sparse radio array allows us to instrument a huge volume of ice to achieve a sufficient sensitivity to detect neutrinos with energies above tens of PeV.

The different signal topologies for neutrino-induced events measured by the optical and in-ice radio detector - the radio detector is mostly sensitive to the cascades produced in the neutrino interaction, while the optical detector can detect long-ranging muon and tau leptons with high accuracy - yield highly complementary information. When detected in coincidence, these signals will allow us to reconstruct the neutrino energy and arrival direction with high fidelity. Furthermore, if events are detected in coincidence with a sufficient rate, they resemble the unique opportunity to study systematic uncertainties and to cross-calibrate both detector components.

We present the expected rate of coincidence events for 10 years of operation. Furthermore, we analyzed possible detector optimizations to increase the coincidence rate.

Astrophysical neutrinos detected by the IceCube observatory can be of Galactic or extragalactic origin. The collective contribution of all the detected neutrinos allows us to measure the total diffuse neutrino Galactic and extragalactic signal. In this work, we describe a simulation package that makes use of this diffuse Galactic contribution information to simulate a population of Galactic sources distributed in a manner similar to our own galaxy. This is then compared with the sensitivities reported by different IceCube data samples to estimate the number of sources that IceCube can detect. We provide the results of the simulation that allows us to make statements about the nature of the sources contributing to the IceCube diffuse signal.