The Performance of Double Cascades Identification in IceCube-Gen2

• Main Author: Zhang, Fuyudi
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/441394; https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/search?p=id:%22PUBDB-2020-02476%22

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer in-ice Cherenkov detector located at the South Pole. At high energies, the neutrino flux of is expected to be observed in the ratio of 1 : 1 : 1 on Earth. A ternary particle identification technique on the basis of three event topologies,single cascades, double cascades, and tracks, has been developed. While tracks arise mainly from charged-current muon neutrino interactions, single cascades from neutral-current interactions of all neutrino flavors and many charge-current interactions of electron neutrinos. Double cascades arise from charged-current tau neutrino interactions and its subsequent non-muonic decay of the taus if the decay length is large enough to be resolved. Such double cascades are unique to tau neutrinos and can be used to identify them. The next-generation neutrino observatory, IceCube-Gen2 will have an instrumented volume nearly 10 times greater than IceCube and a different geometry with larger string spacing. In this thesis, evaluation on the performance of double cascades identification in IceCube-Gen2 is realized by analyzing the IceCube high-energy starting event sample but only using a subset of the optical sensors that is similar in layout to the future IceCube-Gen2 geometry.