The KM3NeT Consortium and the northern hemisphere neutrino telescope

The KM3NeT Consortium is currently carrying on a research and development activity to build a cubic kilometerscale neutrino telescope in the deep Mediterranean Sea. The KM3NeT Consortium follows on from the NEMO and NESTOR pilot projects, which have produced several prototypes and the ANTARES collaboration, which has built and is operating a 0.1 cubic kilometer volume deep-sea neutrino telescope. The KM3NeT Mediterranean neutrino telescope will complement the Antarctic Icecube observatory, allowing the complete survey of the sky using neutrinos as a probe. The main physics goals of KM3NeT include the detection of neutrinos from astrophysical sources such as active galactic nuclei, supernova remnants and γ-ray bursts as well as the search for new physics, such as neutrino signals from neutralino annihilation. To achieve the best performance, an extensive optimisation process is underway, looking for the best geometrical configuration of the detector for maximum sensitivity, and evaluating the most reliable technical solutions to allow long-term, low-maintenance operations.