Active Galactic Nuclei XVI: A Sea of Discoveries

(Highlight) KM3NeT/ARCA: status, recent results and perspectives for AGN studies

19 Jun 2026, 15:00

20m

Sala Conferenze presso Autorità di Sistema Portuale (Brindisi)

Talk S9 - Current and Future Facilities for AGN Science: Discussing the implementation and scientific exploitation of major current and future space-based and ground-based facilities with Italian involvement, focusing on maximizing their impact on AGN studies

Speaker

Dr Simone Biagi (INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Sud)

Description

KM3NeT is a deep-sea neutrino observatory under construction in the Mediterranean Sea. The experiment comprises two Cherenkov detectors: ARCA, optimised for the detection of TeV–PeV neutrinos, and ORCA, dedicated to the measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters. The construction of ARCA is progressing steadily, and the detector is already delivering competitive physics results in its partial configuration. At present, the array comprises about 25% of the final instrumented volume. Even at this stage, the detector has demonstrated excellent performance in reconstructing high-energy neutrino events. A major highlight is the recent observation of an extremely energetic neutrino candidate with a reconstructed energy of about 220 PeV, the most energetic neutrino event detected to date. ARCA offers strong discovery potential for high-energy neutrinos from Active Galactic Nuclei. This contribution provides an overview of the status of the KM3NeT infrastructure and recent scientific results, emphasising the implications for AGN studies in the framework of multi-messenger astronomy.