Kael Hanson's home-page

In Brief

I am a physics professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and researcher in the field of particle astrophysics. My principal interests include high-energy neutrino astrophysics and instrumentation related to photodetection, RF design, and high-speed analog and digital logic systems. See the text below for pointers to my experimental affiliations.

My coordinates

Funny picture of Kael
Dr. Kael HANSON
Chargé de cours
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Service de Physique des particules élémentaires
Boulevard du Triomphe, CP-230
B-1050 Brussels, Belgium

Office: VUB Campus Building G Locale 0G125
Email: khanson@ulb.ac.be
Tel: +32-2-629-35-82
Fax: +32-2-629-38-16

Teaching

Electronics for Physicists (PHYS-F-314)

Cliquez ici pour acceder le site web du cours.

Particle Astrophysics (PHYS-F-467)

Course timetable

Following are the lecture notes which accompany several of the lectures.
PDF Introduction
PDF The computational framework: particle physics and cosmology
PDF Exercises #1 and #2
PDF Exercises #3
PDF Cosmic Rays
PDF Underground Muons and Neutrinos
PDF PPTX Neutrino Oscillations and Neutrino Astrophysics
PDF Dark Matter / Dark Energy and VHE Gamma Ray Astronomy
PDF PDF Printable Data analysis using IceCube Data

Research

IceCube

icecube logo in black and white IceCube is a neutrino telescope currently under construction at the geographic South Pole. It is a joint collaboration between over 300 physicists from Europe, USA, Japan, Canada, and New Zealand. It consists of a deep array of 5000 10" photomultipler tubes deployed between 1450 m and 2450 m in the glacial ice and 160 frozen IceTop tanks at the surface which form an airshower detector. IceCube has been optimized for the detection of astrophysical diffuse and point sources of high-energy (> 1 TeV) neutrinos, however its scientific reach extends into several areas including cosmic ray composition around the knee, dark matter, gamma ray bursts, and MeV neutrinos from galactic supernova explosions. However, IceCube is unlike anything ever built and it is likely that in the coming years we will find entirely different uses for this powerful tool.

I manage the IceCube data acquisition system, conventionally known as the DAQ. The DAQ is the combined package of in-ice hardware, data transmission over cables, and counting-house hardware and software that is responsible for the collection of some 300 MB/sec of data coming out of the ice of which 10 MB/sec is written to disk file for later analysis.

The 86 string IceCube detector (IC86) was completed on Dec 18, 2010. The project will switch to 86-string data collection sometime in May 2011 following a transition of the commissioning and software systems to the new configuration. Before this there were the following science runs: IC79 (May 2010 - May 2011); IC59 (June 2009 - May 2010); IC40 (May 2008 - June 2009). IC22 data was taken beginning March 2007 until May 2008 and produced several science papers even though the detector itself was not officially in operational mode.

IceCube talks

Powerpoint PDF Slides from the Nov 17th 2010 DAQ review

Askar'yan Radio Array (ARA)

The mission of ARA is to probe the EHE end (> 100's of PeV) of the neutrino energy spectrum, hoping to capture particles resulting from the GZK interaction of protons on the CMBR. The detector technology is premised on antennas sensitive to the electromagnetic Askar'yan pulse radiated when high energy EM cascades dissipate in dense RF transparent media.


Dernière modification 10 mai 2012