IceCube++: Design study for a multi-km3 Cherenkov detector

The construction of the full 86 string IceCube detector at the South Pole will be completed in January 2011. IceCube will search for astrophysical neutrinos in the TeV and PeV range with unprecedented sensitivity. In case of a discovery it is desirable for this signal to increase the sensitivity. In this study we investigate how to achieve this by increasing the detector volume using a large number of additional optical sensors. For several geometrical configurations of the detector neutrino events are simulated and effective areas are calculated. An important topic is the dependence of the achievable effective area on the neutrino energy and the spacing of the optical sensors.