The great ice confluence of 2025

The annual expedition on construction of a neutrino telescope on Lake Baikal completed.

The Baikal-GVD project participants deployed the 14th cluster of the facility in a configuration of eight garlands. The cluster will include one more garland in the future. Clusters 1 and 13 were maintained and upgraded, as well as the prototype garland of the next-generation neutrino telescope that was deployed jointly with the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP, Beijing). In addition, a huge garland with optical modules based on 20-inch photomultiplier tubes was commissioned.

In parallel with the expansion of the neutrino observatory, colleagues from Irkutsk State University and the Limnological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences carried out a number of experiments on hydrology.

The work in the project ice camp was completed two weeks earlier due to the difficult ice conditions during the winter and the entire expedition. Snowless weather after the ice break-up and sharp changes in day and night temperatures at the beginning of the expedition with a small ice thickness resulted in the formation of many cracks in the ice cover. And the lack of snow on the ice in the second half of the expedition under bright sunshine and warm weather sharply changed the ice structure that resulted in a decrease in its bearing capacity at the same thickness.

For this reason, the camp was shut down early, despite all the effort it took to get the equipment in for further deployment. This situation is repeated on the lake to a greater or lesser extent about once every ten years, adding new inputs to the "piggy bank" of experience in ice operations. Nevertheless, many of the expedition's plans were accomplished. Early departure from the ice allowed sending the released qualified specialists to the reorganization of the onshore computing centre for the subsequent development of the Baikal-GVD detector.

Based on the information from the JINR Press Office