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Michigan State University

 

Neutrinos provide a unique view of the universe, able to travel  distances and escape from environments that light cannot. As a result of  their low interaction rates with matter, detection of these cosmic  messengers requires cubic-kilometer or larger deep underground  detectors. Elimination of background events from cosmic rays that are  billions of times more common and reconstruction of neutrino events from  the very sparse detector arrays required by large volumes and finite  funding pose substantial computational challenges. In the case of  IceCube, these big-data challenges are magnified by the constraints of working at  the South Pole with extremely limited network connectivity and a limited  power budget. In this talk, I will discuss the approaches adopted by  IceCube and the challenges on the horizon for future larger and  higher-rate instruments with even larger datasets.