MEASURING THE OPTICAL CHARACTERISTICS AT THE BAIKAL NEUTRINO TELESCOPE SITE

The deep underwater Neutrino Telescope Baikal NT1000 has been deployed in Lake Baikal since 2015. Detector is mainly designed to study astrophysical neutrino fluxes at energies from a few TeV up to 100 PeV. The first stage NT1000 will be an array of 2300 optical modules with an instrumental volume of about 0.4 cubic kilometers, which is planned to be completed by 2020–2021. The properties of Baikal water and a combination of other related circumstances make it possible to create a unique installation in the world practice in sensitivity and angular resolution, opening up new horizons in astronomy and astrophysics. In this article basic information about the NT1000 and the being developed method to measure the optical characteristics at the detector’s water medium using a high-power laser light source are provided.