APPLICATION OF BAYES ’ THEOREM TO MUON TRACK RECONSTRUCTION IN AMANDA

• Main Author: T. Deyoung
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Ice cap; Polar Ice Cap
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.392.8415; http://www.ippp.dur.ac.uk/old/Workshops/02/statistics/proceedings/deyoung.pdf

The AMANDA neutrino telescope detects neutrinos by observing Cherenkov light from secondary leptons produced in charged current neutrino interactions. At lower energies, a background of penetrating muons approximately times as numerous as neutrino-induced muon events is rejected by looking for muons travelling upward through the earth. Because the detector is designed to maximize effective volume rather than for precision measurements, incorporating this information into the muon track reconstruction algorithm via Bayes ’ theorem leads to a substantial reduction in the misreconstruction rate. 1 THE AMANDA DETECTOR The Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) is designed to detect secondary leptons produced in high energy neutrino charged-current interactions with the South Polar ice cap or the bedrock below. The leptons are detected through the Cherenkov light emitted as they pass through the ice, which is extremely transparent. The detector presently consists of a three-dimensional array of 677 optical