![]() At a given energy, this angular resolution depends on the optical scattering properties of the medium and on the size of the detector. To distinguish a signal from point sources in this background, good angular resolution greatly improves the telescope sensitivity. The flux of neutrinos from interactions of cosmic rays with the atmosphere (“atmospheric neutrinos”) is an irreducible source of background which only differs from the neutrino signal from distant objects in the energy spectrum. In this matter, the angular resolution of the neutrino telescope is of particular importance: not only to resolve and correlate sources with other instruments using other messengers, but also because it plays an important role in rejecting background. Although the search for a diffuse flux of neutrinos from unresolved distant sources is in the research program of neutrino telescopes, the main emphasis of the program is to search for distinct point sources of neutrinos such as the examples mentioned above. Furthermore, this feature gives an exclusive signal for indirect searches of dark matter based on the detection of high energy products from the annihilation of dark matter particles which might have been accumulated in the cores of dense objects such as the Sun, Earth and the centre of the Galaxy. The ability of neutrinos to exit dense sources means that new compact acceleration sites might be discovered. For known high energy sources such as active galactic nuclei, gamma ray bursters, microquasars and supernova remnants, neutrinos will allow to distinguish unambiguously between hadronic and electronic acceleration mechanisms and to localize the acceleration sites more precisely than charged cosmic ray detectors. ![]() ![]() This specificity of the neutrino astronomy means that in addition to knowledge on cosmic accelerators seen by other messengers, it may lead to the discovery of objects hitherto unknown. The weakly interacting nature of the neutrino make it a complementary cosmic probe to other messengers such as multi-wavelength light and charged cosmic rays: the neutrino can escape from sources surrounded with dense matter or radiation fields and can travel cosmological distances without being absorbed. Neutrino Astronomy is a new and unique method to observe the Universe.
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