AMANDA and ICECUBE Neutrino Telescopes

AMANDA(Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array) [1] is a neutrino telescope in the deep, highly transparent ice under the South Pole, whose main purpose is to detect high energy (50 GeV- multi TeV) neutrinos from point sources in the universe. The challenge is to find these rare, but undis-turbed messengers of cosmic accelerators on top of the flux of muons and neutrinos originating from cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere. One hopes that by this yet uncharted window to the universe, a large list of open astrophysical questions can be addressed. These concern e.g. the nature of active galaxies, γ-ray bursts or supernovae and the mechanisms of particle acceleration to energies of 1020 eV and above. However, also particle physics proper may profit, e.g. in the area of neutrino properties and ultra-high energy cross section, in the search for supersymmetric particles that may constitute part of the “dark matter ” or in the search for as yet unknown relics of the big bang. Finally, the simul-taneous observation of photons and neutrinos over cosmological distance