Neutrino telescopes
Résumé
Neutrino astrophysics offers a new possibility to observe our Universe: high-energy neutrinos, produced by the most energetic phenomena in our Galaxy and in the Universe, carry complementary (if not exclusive) information about the cosmos: this young discipline extends in fact the conventional astronomy beyond the usual electromagnetic probe. The weak interaction of neutrinos with matter allows them to escape from the core of astrophysical objects and in this sense they represent a complementary messenger with respect to photons. However, their detection on Earth due to the small interaction cross section requires a large target mass. The aim of this article is to review the scientific motivations of the high-energy neutrino astrophysics, the detection principles together with the description of a running apparatus, the experiment ANTARES, the performance of this detector with some results, and the presentation of other neutrino telescope projects.