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First All-Sky Measurement of Muon Flux with IceCube

First All-Sky Measurement of Muon Flux with IceCube. IceCube REU Summer 2008 Kristin Rosenau Advisor: Teresa Montaruli. IceCube Neutrino Telescope. Located at the geographic South Pole Buried beneath roughly 1.5 km of ice, extending down to 2.5 km.

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First All-Sky Measurement of Muon Flux with IceCube

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  1. First All-Sky Measurement of Muon Flux with IceCube IceCube REU Summer 2008 Kristin Rosenau Advisor: Teresa Montaruli

  2. IceCube Neutrino Telescope • Located at the geographic South Pole • Buried beneath roughly 1.5 km of ice, extending down to 2.5 km. • Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) was the proof of concept for IceCube • 4,800 Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), or photomultiplier tubes, are inserted into the ice on 80 cables referred to as "strings." • Each string holds 60 DOMs.

  3. IceCube Neutrino Telescope • Works on the principle of Cherenkov Light • Muons produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere are background for astrophysical searches • Neutrinos cannot be detected directly • Neutrinos convert into muons inside the Earth • Earth is used as a filter against background

  4. Project Objective • Goal: The first all-sky measurement of muon flux with IceCube. • Muons are a calibration tool for IceCube. • Unprecedented statistics for these events • Project Steps: • Initial Cuts (weak) • Final Cuts (hard) • Compare IceCube-22 (IC-22) data with Monte Carlo simulation

  5. Ideal Situation Reality (Horizon) (Horizon)

  6. Useful Variables • Variables with highest degrees of correlation to the angular resolution (which indicate a quality parameter): • Sigma Paraboloid • Direct Length • Reduced Likelihood

  7. 20º 3º 1º “Good” events “Bad” events Effect of Cuts where =efficiency 1.5º 1º

  8. Determining cut parameters based on optimization

  9. Optimization Misreconstructed Muons (Horizon) Reduction in misreconstructed muons

  10. Angular Resolution Before cuts After cuts

  11. Coincident Muons

  12. quality parameter before cuts after cuts Background Suppression angular resolution

  13. Single vs. Coincident Muons Single and coincident muons have been eliminated past the horizon.

  14. IceCube-22 Data • Minimum Bias Data • Keeps every 200th event • Muon Filtered Data • Keeps all events below 70º because the neutrinos below the horizon are the focus

  15. IceCube-22 Data • The initial cut was applied to the Minimum Bias Data • The final cut was applied to the Muon Filtered Data

  16. Results

  17. Results

  18. In the Future • The muon flux can be used to compare and contrast IceCube with other detectors • It will be used extensively in calibration of the IceCube detector Desiati P. et al. 2003. Response of AMANDA-II to Cosmic Ray Muons; Universal Academy Press, Inc. 1373-1376

  19. Acknowledgements • A special thanks to the following people for all the advice and help with this project: • Patrick Berghaus • Teresa Montaruli • Paolo Desiati • Albrecht Karle • IceCube Collaboration • UW-Madison Astrophysics REU Program • NSF

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