Baikal Telescope Learns to See Distant Universe Objects with Record Accuracy

At a depth of more than a kilometer under the waters of Lake Baikal operates one of the most unusual scientific instruments in the world – the Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope. Now physicists have taught it to determine much more accurately where mysterious cosmic particles come from. The development was presented by scientists of the international Baikal-GVD collaboration.

New data processing algorithms allow determining the direction of the particle source with an accuracy of up to 0.2 degrees. This is a very high indicator for modern astrophysics. In other words, the telescope has become much more accurate in "seeing" objects in deep space, including active galactic nuclei and blazars, located billions of light-years from Earth. Blazars are considered one of the most powerful and energetic objects in the Universe.

The telescope itself is located in the waters of Lake Baikal at a depth of about 1366 meters. Currently, the system consists of 14 independent clusters and 4212 optical modules.

Each module is a sealed glass sphere with a highly sensitive light sensor. The telescope records the so-called Cherenkov radiation – a faint blue glow that appears when high-energy particles move in water.

One of the main problems for scientists was powerful optical noise. Microorganisms live in Baikal, creating bioluminescence – natural flashes of light in the water. Because of this, the system has to separate rare neutrino events from billions of extraneous signals.

To solve the problem, researchers used machine learning methods. A special algorithm analyzes about 20 parameters of each event and helps filter out informational noise with an efficiency of up to 70%.

All information goes to the computing center of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, where signals are combined and calibrated.

According to researchers, Baikal-GVD is already ready for its main task – mapping the neutrino sky of the Northern Hemisphere together with the Antarctic IceCube telescope.

The Baikal telescope is gradually turning into a full-fledged instrument for studying the most powerful processes in the Universe and extremely distant cosmic objects.