The KM3NeT infrastructure: Status and first results

Abstract

KM3NeT is a research infrastructure in construction under the Mediterranean Sea. It hosts two large volume neutrino Cherenkov telescopes: ARCA at a depth of 3500 m, located offshore Sicily, and ORCA, 2500 m under the sea level, offshore the southern French coast. The two detectors share the same detection principle and technology and the same data acquisition design, the only difference being the geometrical arrangement of the optical sensors. This allows to span a wide range of neutrino energy and cover a large scientific program: The study of neutrino properties, first of all neutrino mass ordering, the identification and study of high energy neutrino astrophysical sources, indirect dark matter searches and core collapse supernovae detection.