Laboratory of High Energy Neutrino Astrophysics

The birthday of the laboratory of high-energy neutrino astrophysics can be considered October 1, 1980, when a meeting of the scientific council of the Institute of Nuclear Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences was held, at which the proposal of Moisei Aleksandrovich Markov was accepted to create a laboratory at the institute for the development of a method for deep-sea registration of elementary particles and focusing on Lake Baikal , as a place to create a test site for prototypes of the world's planned deep-sea large-scale neutrino telescopes.

Grigory Vladimirovich Domogatsky became the manager, the first employees were L.B. Bezrukov and E.V. Bugaev. By 1984–1986, the laboratory team had been formed; it became the core of the newly created Baikal collaboration of universities, higher education institutions and research institutes of the USSR.

The development of the project for the first deep-sea neutrino telescope NT-200 was preceded by long-term, for about ten years, studies of hydro-optical, hydrophysical and hydrological conditions for conducting experiments on the lake. Baikal, and in 1989 the development of the project was completed.

During the same period, a Baikal division was formed within the laboratory - the Baikal Technical Station, with the task of maintaining and repairing technical equipment for winter expeditions, developing a coastal base, and constantly maintaining and supporting the installation’s power supply system.

NT-200 became one of the two largest, along with the AMANDA detector, created at the South Pole around the same years, high-energy neutrino detectors.

In order to increase the efficiency of recording high-energy neutrinos in 2004–2005. The NT-200 telescope was modernized. The new installation was named NT200+ and provided both an increase in the effective volume for detecting neutrino cascades and a significant increase in the energy resolution of the telescope as a whole.

The first generation neutrino telescopes NT200/NT200+ were the initial version of the basic structural unit of the future Baikal neutrino telescope with an effective volume of the order of a cubic kilometer NT1000. The work was carried out between 2008 and 2011.

Long-term field tests of the equipment of the NT1000 section were successfully carried out in Lake. Baikal from 2008 to 2010 Then a prototype of the HT1000 cluster was created and tested in laboratory conditions, which was deployed during the winter expedition to Lake. Baikal in 2011

The cluster acquired its modern shape by 2016. The NT-1000 project began to be perceived by the world community as BAIKAL-GVD (Gigaton Volume Detector).

Since April 2020, the neutrino telescope has been operating as part of seven clusters, and the total effective volume of the installation in the task of recording shower events from high-energy neutrinos (E ≥ 100 TeV) has reached a value of ~ 0.35 cubic km.