In recent years, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has started to unravel the high-energy neutrino sky. The discoveries of TXS0506+056 and NGC1068 as neutrino emitters as well as neutrino emission from the galactic plane hint at a whole zoo of possible neutrino sources. However, open questions regarding the production mechanisms remain that require a new generation of neutrino telescopes to answer.
The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) is a planned, next generation neutrino telescope off the coast of Vancouver Island, where it will leverage deep-sea infrastructure provided by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC). Once completed, P-ONE aims for greatly improved resolutions compared to IceCube, complementing other next-generation telescopes, such as KM3NeT.
While the hardware design of a first prototype cable is currently being finalized, the detector geometry of the final instrument (up to 70 cables) is not yet fixed. In this talk I will present the current status and prospects of P-ONE, as well as the progress of optimizing the detector design by modern machine learning methods.