High-energy Underwater Neutrino Telescope (HUNT)

Official website: http://hunt.ihep.ac.cn/.

HUNT: A New Generation of Underwater High-energy Neutrino Telescope for the Future

Scientific goal. For more than a century, the origin of cosmic rays has been a lasting mystery, challenging scientists to reveal the process and source behind these high-energy particles. High-energy neutrinos can propagate over long distances without the influence of magnetic field or matter, and have become an indispensable tool to explore the origin of cosmic rays, providing unique insights into their generation mechanism and astrophysical sources. The LHAASO team of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences put forward the High-energy Underwater Neutrino Telescope (HUNT) project, with a detector volume of about 30 cubic kilometers, aiming at detecting high-energy neutrino point sources inside and outside the Milky Way in a short time. It is expected that dozens of sources will be observed within ten years, which will lead the development of neutrino astronomy.

Status. The HUNT project relies on three scientific experiments, namely LHAASO, Deep Network China and Baikal-GVD, and has gathered the participation of nearly 20 scientific research units and more than 150 researchers in China. The HUNT project has completed four rounds of deepwater tests in South China Sea and Lake Baikal respectively. At present, a small prototype array with 7 strings and 56 OMs is being built in South China Sea, and it is expected to measure atmospheric neutrinos.