An improved muon track reconstruction for IceCube

IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope operating at the South Pole. One of its main objectives is to detect astrophysical neutrinos and identify their sources. High-energy muon neutrinos are identified through the secondary muons produced via charge current interactions with the ice. The p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bradascio, Federica, Glüsenkamp, Thorsten, IceCube Collaboration
Format: Conference Object
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
muon: energy loss
muon: tracks
muon: track data analysis
muon: secondary
charge: current
radiation: Cherenkov
IceCube
angular resolution
Cherenkov counter
photomultiplier
parametrization
stochastic
photon
pole
ice
South Pole
South pole
Online Access:https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/434822
https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/search?p=id:%22PUBDB-2020-00365%22
Description
Summary:IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope operating at the South Pole. One of its main objectives is to detect astrophysical neutrinos and identify their sources. High-energy muon neutrinos are identified through the secondary muons produced via charge current interactions with the ice. The present best-performing directional reconstruction of the muon track is a maximum likelihood method which uses 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. This contribution 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 muon energy loss profile leads to an improvement of about 20% to the muon angular resolution of IceCube.

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