Physics

Why Neutrinos?

• Neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the Universe.
• The Universe is transparent to neutrinos.
• Being electrically neutral, they are rarely absorbed by matter or deflected by magnetic fields.
• A vast flux of neutrinos reaches the Earth along straight trajectories, pointing directly back to the sources. Neutrinos carry undistorted information about their origins—even from the most distant cosmic objects or events.

What Can Neutrinos Tell Us?

Neutrinos can advance our understanding of:

• early Universe’s evolution,
• dark matter and dark energy,
• formation of chemical elements,
• stellar evolution,
• internal structure and composition of the Sun and Earth,
  fundamental properties of neutrinos.

Where Are Neutrino Telescopes Constructed? 

Neutrino telescopes are deployed deep in transparent natural media:

• in Lake Baikal (freshwater),
• at the South Pole (ice),
• in the Mediterranean Sea (saltwater).

How Are Neutrinos Detected?

The deep-underwater neutrino detection method, first proposed by M. A. Markov in 1960, relies on recording Cherenkov radiation from secondary muons and high-energy showers produced when neutrinos interact with matter in transparent natural media.

What Is Baikal-GVD’s objective?

The Baikal-GVD Neutrino Telescope investigates the Universe’s most powerful phenomena—those accelerating particles to energies far beyond Earth-based laboratory limits. These processes are expected to produce detectable neutrino emissions.

What Makes Baikal-GVD Effective?

Large detection volume combined with excellent angular and energy resolution,
a low light background in Lake Baikal’s freshwater enable precise studies of both diffuse neutrino fluxes and individual astrophysical neutrino sources (steady or transient).
High angular resolution for track-like and cascade-like events (~0.25° for muons and ~2° for cascades) enhances the ability to find point-like cosmic-ray accelerators.

A real-time alert system rapidly reconstructs neutrino events and notifies the global scientific community when predefined triggers are met. Thus, the Baikal-GVD plays its role in multimessenger astronomy.

Why Does Multimessenger Astronomy Matter?

Multimessenger astronomy combines data from cosmic rays, neutrinos, photons of all wavelengths, and gravitational waves. This approach provides a unified view of physical processes driving the non-thermal Universe and links Baikal-GVD’s findings to those in traditional astronomy and X-ray and gamma-ray observations. Correlating high-energy cosmic neutrinos with gamma rays coincident in space or time (or ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays coincident in space) can yield statistically stronger results.

What Are Sources of Astrophysical Neutrinos?

The closest sources (from Earth’s perspective) are assumed to be in the vicinity to the centre of our Galaxy and along the Galactic plane.

The most promising Galactic sources include supernova remnants, pulsars, areas close to the black hole Sgr A* at the Galactic Centre, black hole/neutron star binary systems, and molecular cloud clusters.

Extragalactic sources are active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts, starburst galaxies, and galaxy clusters.