A muon-track reconstruction exploiting stochastic losses for large-scale Cherenkov detectors

• Other Authors: Japaridze, George, Clark Atlanta University (Author), IceCube collaboration (Author)
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Clark Atlanta University; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/cau.ir:2021_japaridze_george_abbasi_etal; https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/cau.ir%3A2021_japaridze_george_abbasi_etal/datastream/TN/view/A%20muon-track%20reconstruction%20exploiting%20stochastic%20losses%20for%20large-scale%20Cherenkov%20detectors.jpg

IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope operating at the South Pole. The main goal of IceCube is the detection of astrophysical neutrinos and the identification of their sources. High-energy muon neutrinos are observed via the secondary muons produced in charge current interactions with nuclei in the ice. Currently, the best performing muon track directional reconstruction is based on a maximum likelihood method using the arrival time distribution of Cherenkov photons registered by the experiment's photomultipliers. A known systematic shortcoming of the prevailing method is to assume a continuous energy loss along the muon track. However at energies >1 TeV the light yield from muons is dominated by stochastic showers. This paper discusses a generalized ansatz where the expected arrival time distribution is parametrized by a stochastic muon energy loss pattern. This more realistic parametrization of the loss profile leads to an improvement of the muon angular resolution of up to 20% for through-going tracks and up to a factor 2 for starting tracks over existing algorithms. Additionally, the procedure to estimate the directional reconstruction uncertainty has been improved to be more robust against numerical errors.