Frontier Physics with Neutrino Point Clouds
Name of applicant
Bo Simmendefeldt Schmidt
Title
Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 2,021,269
Year
2025
Type of grant
Reintegration Fellowships
What?
Neutrinos are "ghost" particles that rarely interact with matter. IceCube Upgrade will record their rare collisions in the Antarctic ice as rich 3D, time-stamped patterns of light ("point clouds"). I will build the analysis to read these patterns and estimate each neutrino’s direction and energy--ready as the Upgrade begins delivering data in 2025–26.
Why?
Learning which neutrino is heaviest or lightest (the mass ordering) refines how we read signals from exploding stars, the Sun, and the early Universe. More precise reconstructions push the frontiers of neutrino physics by bringing this answer closer, while creating tools that next-generation telescopes can reuse.
How?
We map each flash of light to a dot in space and time and connect dots by simple physics rules (e.g., could one cause another?). A geometry-aware neural network--built to read these 3D constellations--then infers where the neutrino came from and how energetic it was.