Chinese scientists have tested neutrino detectors on Lake Baikal and indicated their intention to implement the HUNT telescope project at the bottom of the lake, said Dmitry Zaborov, senior researcher at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to him, two "garlands" of Chinese-made optical modules are already operating at the Russian installation, which are planned to be used in a future project.
The HUNT project was proposed by the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences about two years ago and involves the creation of the world's largest underwater neutrino telescope with a volume of about 30 cubic kilometers. This significantly exceeds the parameters of existing and planned analogues, including Baikal-GVD, KM3NeT, as well as IceCube-Gen2 and TRIDENT.
The telescope will consist of about 2,000 garlands of photomultipliers placed at great depth and designed to detect flashes of light during the interaction of cosmic neutrinos with matter. Chinese researchers are considering Baikal and the South China Sea as possible sites for the installation, where a deep-sea robot for mounting detectors has previously been tested.
