Current status of the DUMAND project

The DUMAND project is aiming to build a huge Cerenkov detector capable of detecting astronomical neutrino sources by means of detecting muons in the deep ocean. It has been proposed to DOE in the US and other agencies in Japan and Europe, that an octagonal array should be built as a next stage of the DUMAND project. If approved, this will be the first high energy astronomical neutrino detector in the world. The deep ocean environment and the feasibility of the DUMAND project have been examined extensively. Cosmic ray muons were successfully detected in the ocean at depths from 2000 m to 4000 m. The results of these studies show that there are no outstanding problems for building the DUMAND array in the deep ocean, and it is possible to reconstruct muon trajectories from the data of Cerenkov light generated by muons in the deep ocean environment. It is expected that this 150,000m2 sr array will detect high energy astronomical neutrino point sources in early-90's. (author)