Current status of the ANTARES neutrino telescope

The ANTARES collaboration is currently installing a neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea close to the French coast at Toulon. The complete detector will consist of 900 photomultipliers arranged on 12 detector lines in 2500 m depth, thus instrumenting a volume of 0.01 km3 sea water as target material. The incident neutrinos are detected by collecting the Cherenkov light from charged secondary particles, which are emitted by neutrino interactions with the sea water or the rock of the sea bed beneath. By reconstructing the Cherenkov cone and therewith the direction of the incident neutrinos with high accuracy, the principal objective of ANTARES is the search for point sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos and dark matter. In this presentation, emphasis will be placed on the operation of the detector in the hostile deep sea environment and on the status of the project. Results of the first complete detector line will be shown.