Muon track reconstruction and data selection techniques in AMANDA

• Published in: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
• Main Authors: Ahrens, J., Bai, X., Boersma, D. J., Spiczak, G. M., Spiering, C., Stamatikos, M., Steele, D., Steffen, P., Stokstad, R. G., Sulanke, K.-H., Streicher, O., Taboada, I., Thollander, L., Boeser, Sebastian, Tilav, S., Wagner, W., Walck, C., Wang, Y.-R., Wiebusch, Christopher H., Wiedemann, C., Wischnewski, R., Wissing, H., Woschnagg, K., Yodh, G., Botner, O., AMANDA Collaboration, Bouchta, A., Bouhali, O., Burgess, T., Carius, S., Castermans, T., Chirkin, D., Collin, B., Bay, R., Conrad, J., Cooley, J., Cowen, D. F., Davour, A., De Clercq, C., DeYoung, T., Desiati, P., Dewulf, J.-P., Ekstrom, P., Feser, T., Barwick, S. W., Gaug, M., Gaisser, T. K., Ganugapati, R., Geenen, Heiko, Gerhardt, L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: North-Holland Publ. Co. 2004
• Subjects: info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/530; neutrino: cosmic radiation; muon: showers; Cherenkov counter: water; solids: water; photomultiplier; muon: track data analysis; statistical analysis; muon: background; AMANDA; bibliography; Antarctic; The Antarctic; South Pole; Antarc*; South pole
• Online Access: https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/329836; https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/search?p=id:%22PUBDB-2017-06386%22

The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) is a high-energy neutrino telescope operating at the geographic South Pole. It is a lattice of photo-multiplier tubes buried deep in the polar ice between 1500m and 2000m. The primary goal of this detector is to discover astrophysical sources of high energy neutrinos. A high-energy muon neutrino coming through the earth from the Northern Hemisphere can be identified by the secondary muon moving upward through the detector. The muon tracks are reconstructed with a maximum likelihood method. It models the arrival times and amplitudes of Cherenkov photons registered by the photo-multipliers. This paper describes the different methods of reconstruction, which have been successfully implemented within AMANDA. Strategies for optimizing the reconstruction performance and rejecting background are presented. For a typical analysis procedure the direction of tracks are reconstructed with about 2 degree accuracy.