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Abstract. Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) interact with matter in the atmosphere and at the surface of the Earth to produce a range of cosmogenic nuclides. Measurements of cosmogenic nuclides produced in surface rocks have been used to study past land ice extent as well as to estimate erosion rates. Because the GCR flux reaching the Earth is modulated by magnetic fields (solar and Earth's), records of cosmogenic nuclides produced in the atmosphere have also been used for studies of past solar activity. Studies utilizing cosmogenic nuclides assume that the GCR flux is constant in time, but this assumption may be uncertain by 30 % or more. Here we propose that measurements of 14C of carbon monoxide (14CO) in ice cores at low-accumulation sites can be used as a proxy for variations in GCR flux on timescales of several thousand years. At low-accumulation ice core sites, 14CO in ice below the firn zone originates almost entirely from in situ cosmogenic production by deep-penetrating secondary cosmic ray muons. The flux of such muons is almost insensitive to solar and geomagnetic variations and depends only on the primary GCR flux intensity. We use an empirically constrained model of in situ cosmogenic 14CO production in ice in combination with a statistical analysis to explore the sensitivity of ice core 14CO measurements at Dome C, Antarctica, to variations in the GCR flux over the past ≈ 7000 years. We find that Dome C 14CO measurements would be able to detect a linear change of 6 % over 7 ka, a step increase of 6 % at 3.5 ka or a transient 100-year spike of 190 % at 3.5 ka at the 3σ significance level. The ice core 14CO proxy therefore appears promising for the purpose of providing a high-precision test of the assumption of GCR flux constancy over the Holocene. 

Abstract Current neutrino detectors will observe hundreds to thousands of neutrinos from Galactic supernovae, and future detectors will increase this yield by an order of magnitude or more. With such a data set comes the potential for a huge increase in our understanding of the explosions of massive stars, nuclear physics under extreme conditions, and the properties of the neutrino. However, there is currently a large gap between supernova simulations and the corresponding signals in neutrino detectors, which will make any comparison between theory and observation very difficult. SNEWPY is an open-source software package that bridges this gap. The SNEWPY code can interface with supernova simulation data to generate from the model either a time series of neutrino spectral fluences at Earth, or the total time-integrated spectral fluence. Data from several hundred simulations of core-collapse, thermonuclear, and pair-instability supernovae is included in the package. This output may then be used by an event generator such as sntools or an event rate calculator such as the SuperNova Observatories with General Long Baseline Experiment Simulator (SNOwGLoBES). Additional routines in the SNEWPY package automate the processing of the generated data through the SNOwGLoBES software and collate its output into the observable channels of each detector. In this paper we describe the contents of the package, the physics behind SNEWPY, the organization of the code, and provide examples of how to make use of its capabilities. 

Abstract. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory instruments about 1 km3 of deep, glacial ice at the geographic South Pole. It uses 5160 photomultipliers to detect Cherenkov light emitted by charged relativistic particles. An unexpected light propagation effect observed by the experiment is an anisotropic attenuation, which is aligned with the local flow direction of the ice. We examine birefringent light propagation through the polycrystalline ice microstructure as a possible explanation for this effect. The predictions of a first-principles model developed for this purpose, in particular curved light trajectories resulting from asymmetric diffusion, provide a qualitatively good match to the main features of the data. This in turn allows us to deduce ice crystal properties. Since the wavelength of the detected light is short compared to the crystal size, these crystal properties include not only the crystal orientation fabric, but also the average crystal size and shape, as a function of depth. By adding small empirical corrections to this first-principles model, a quantitatively accurate description of the optical properties of the IceCube glacial ice is obtained. In this paper, we present the experimental signature of ice optical anisotropy observed in IceCube light-emitting diode (LED) calibration data, the theory and parameterization of the birefringence effect, the fitting procedures of these parameterizations to experimental data, and the inferred crystal properties.