News from the ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope

The ANTARES telescope is a device of 0.1km2 size to detect high energy neutrinos. It is located in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of 2500 m. It consists of a three-dimensional matrix of optical modules (OM) containing photomultiplier tubes. As of September 2006 two complete lines and an instrumentation line, called MILOM, are deployed and fully operational for data taking. Three additional lines have been connected by the end of January 2007 allowing the first up-going muon track reconstruction. At the beginning of 2008, the full Antares telescope will be operational with 12 lines. All technical aspects are under control from the mechanical architecture to the constant improvement of the “all-data-to-shore” concept. This talk will focus on the photon signal processing that allows to reconstruct the neutrino track. After a first review of the line architecture, we will present the signal processing and transport from the OM detector to the on-shore storage. During the R&D phases, the ANTARES collaboration has developed new concepts in terms of detector integration, front-end electronics architecture, cables, DAQ hardware architecture and software management. Finally, preliminary results of the performance of the detector will be shown.