NEUTRINO ASTRONOMY AND COSMIC RAYS AT THE SOUTH POLE: LATEST RESULTS FROM AMANDA AND PERSPECTIVES FOR ICECUBE
The AMANDA neutrino telescope has been in operation at the South Pole since 1996. The present final array configuration, operational since 2000, consists of 677 photomultiplier tubes arranged in 19 strings, buried at depths between 1500 and 2000 m in the ice. The most recent results on a multi-year search for point sources of neutrinos will be shown. The study of events triggered in coincidence with the surface array SPASE and AMANDA provided a result on cosmic ray composition. Expected improvements from IceCube/IceTop will also be discussed.

title: Aerogel Cherenkov counter for the BELLE experiment
abstract: In the BELLE experiment at KEKB, a threshold Cherenkov counter system based on silica aerogels will be used to provide πK separation in the momentum region from 0.8 to 3.5 GeV/c. The detector design, recent progress in R&D and results of beam tests are reviewed.

title: Contributions to 2nd TeV Particle Astrophysics Conference (TeV PA II). Madison, Wisconsin 28-31 Aug 2006

title: The jet-disk symbiosis model for gamma ray bursts: cosmic ray and neutrino background contribution
abstract: The relation between the cosmological evolution of the jet-disk symbiosis model for GRBs and the cosmic rays energy distribution is presented. We used two different Star Formation Rates (SFR) as a function of redshift and a Luminosity Function (LF) distribution to obtain the distribution in fluence of GRBs in our model and compare it with the data. We show a good agreement between the fluence distribution we obtain and the corrected data for the 4B BATSE catalogue. The results we obtain are generally valid for models that use jet physics to explain GRB properties.

title: The Statistics of nearly on axis gravitational lensing events
abstract: A small volume of space, nearly on-axis behind a gravitational lens with respect to a given source, will receive a greatly increased radiation flux. In the idealized case of a point mass lens acting on a point source in complete isolation, the volume will approach zero only as the flux tends to infinity; in fact, the volume weighted rms flux is divergent. In realistic cases, finite source size and the effects of other gravitational deflections (i.e., non-zero shear) limit the maximum flux and considerably complicate the physics, but very large fluxes are still produced in small volumes. We consider the physics and statistics of these Extreme Gravitational Lensing Events (EGLE) and present an initial examination of their possible astrophysical effects for various known and putative populations of lensing objects and sources, with particular attention to the case in which finite source size is important but shear is not.

title: Internal properties and environments of dark matter haloes
abstract: We use seven high-resolution N-body simulations to study the correlations among different halo properties (assembly time, spin, shape and substructure), and how these halo properties are correlated with the large-scale environment in which haloes reside. The large-scale tidal field estimated from haloes above a mass threshold is used as our primary quantity to characterize the large-scale environment, while other parameters, such as the local overdensity and the morphology of large-scale structure, are used for comparison. For haloes at a fixed mass, all the halo properties depend significantly on environment, particularly the tidal field. The environmental dependence of halo assembly time is primarily driven by local tidal field. The mass of the unbound fraction in substructure is boosted in strong tidal force region, while the bound fraction is suppressed. Haloes have a tendency to spin faster in a stronger tidal field and the trend is stronger for more massive haloes. The spin vectors show significant alignment with the intermediate axis of the tidal field, as expected from the tidal torque theory. Both the major and minor axes of haloes are strongly aligned with the corresponding principal axes of the tidal field. In general, a halo that can accrete more material after the formation of its main halo on average is younger, more elongated, spins faster and contains a larger amount of substructure. Higher-density environments not only provide more material for haloes to accrete, but also are places of stronger tidal fields that tend to suppress halo accretion. The environmental dependencies are the results of these two competing effects. The tidal field based on haloes can be estimated from observation, and we discuss the implications of our results for the environmental dependence of galaxy properties.

title: Kinematic Evolution of a Slow CME in Corona Viewed by STEREO-B on 8 October 2007
abstract: We studied the kinematic evolution of the 8 October 2007 CME in the corona based on observations from Sun – Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) onboard satellite B of Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO). The observational results show that this CME obviously deflected to a lower latitude region of about 30° at the beginning. After this, the CME propagated radially. We also analyze the influence of the background magnetic field on the deflection of this CME. We find that the deflection of this CME at an early stage may be caused by a nonuniform distribution of the background magnetic-field energy density and that the CME tended to propagate to the region with lower magnetic-energy density. In addition, we found that the velocity profile of this gradual CME shows multiphased evolution during its propagation in the COR1-B FOV. The CME velocity first remained constant: 23.1 km s−1. Then it accelerated continuously with a positive acceleration of ≈7.6 m s−2.

title: Tibet air shower array: results and future plan
abstract: The Tibet air shower array, which has an effective area of 36,900 m2, has been in operation at Yangbajing in Tibet, China at an altitude of 4,300 m above sea level. In this paper, we will briefly introduce the recent gamma-ray observation with the present Tibet air shower array and our future plan which is called the Tibet muon detector (MD) project.