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...
Main Authors: | , , |
---|---|
Format: | Conference Object |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2019
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/434822 https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/search?p=id:%22PUBDB-2020-00365%22 |
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. |
---|