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35th International Cosmic Ray Conference, Bexco, South Korea, 10 Jul 2017 - 20 Jul 2017; Proceedings of Science (ICRC2017), 991 (2017)., The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope buried in the icesheet at the South Pole that detects neutrinos of all flavors with energies from tens of GeV to sev-eral PeV. The instrument provided the first measurement of the flux of high-energy astrophysicalneutrinos, opening a new window to the non-thermal universe. Here we present design studiesfor IceCube-Gen2, the next-generation neutrino observatory for the South Pole. IceCube-Gen2will have an instrumented volume nearly 10 times greater than IceCube alone, substantially in-creasing sensitivity to high-energy neutrinos. On the surface, a large air shower detector willveto high-energy atmospheric muons and neutrinos from the southern hemisphere, enhancing thereach of astrophysical neutrino searches. In the ice, a number of new optical module designscurrently being evaluated will allow for substantially increased photosensitive area per unit cost.We show how these different sensor designs affect the instrument’s ability to resolve the sourcesof astrophysical neutrinos., Published by SISSA, Trieste