We develop a novel technique to exploit the extensive data sets provided by underwater neutrino telescopes to gain information on bioluminescence in the deep sea. The passive nature of the telescopes gives us the unique opportunity to infer information on bioluminescent organisms without actively interfering with them. We propose a statistical method that allows us to reconstruct the light emission of individual organisms, as well as their location and movement. A mathematical model is built to describe the measurement process of underwater neutrino telescopes and the signal generation of the biological organisms. The Metric Gaussian Variational Inference algorithm is used to reconstruct the model parameters using photon counts recorded by photomultiplier tubes. We apply this method to synthetic data sets and data collected by the ANTARES neutrino telescope. The telescope is located 40 km off the French coast and fixed to the sea floor at a depth of 2475 m. The runs with synthetic data reveal that we can model the emitted bioluminescent flashes of the organisms. Furthermore, we find that the spatial resolution of the localization of light sources highly depends on the configuration of the telescope. Precise measurements of the efficiencies of the detectors and the attenuation length of the water are crucial to reconstruct the light emission. Finally, the application to ANTARES data reveals the first localizations of bioluminescent organisms using neutrino telescope data.

中文翻译：

---

使用 ANTARES 深海中微子望远镜研究生物发光闪光

我们开发了一种新技术，利用水下中微子望远镜提供的大量数据集来获取深海生物发光的信息。望远镜的被动性质为我们提供了独特的机会来推断生物发光生物体的信息，而无需主动干扰它们。我们提出了一种统计方法，使我们能够重建个体生物体的光发射，以及它们的位置和运动。建立了数学模型来描述水下中微子望远镜的测量过程和生物有机体的信号产生。度量高斯变分推理算法用于使用光电倍增管记录的光子计数来重建模型参数。我们将此方法应用于合成数据集和 ANTARES 中微子望远镜收集的数据。该望远镜距离法国海岸 40 公里，固定在海底 2475 米深处。合成数据的运行表明我们可以模拟生物体发出的生物发光闪光。此外，我们发现光源定位的空间分辨率很大程度上取决于望远镜的配置。探测器效率和水的衰减长度的精确测量对于重建光发射至关重要。最后，ANTARES 数据的应用揭示了使用中微子望远镜数据的生物发光生物体的首次定位。