• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: A muon-track reconstruction exploiting stochastic losses for large-scale Cherenkov detectors
  • Contributor: Abbasi, R.; Ackermann, M.; Adams, J.; Aguilar, J.A.; Ahlers, M.; Ahrens, M.; Alispach, C.; Alves, A.A.; Amin, N.M.; An, R.; Andeen, K.; Anderson, T.; Ansseau, I.; Anton, G.; Argüelles, C.; Axani, S.; Bai, X.; Balagopal V., A.; Barbano, A.; Barwick, S.W.; Bastian, B.; Basu, V.; Baur, S.; Bay, R.; [...]
  • imprint: IOP Publishing, 2021
  • Published in: Journal of Instrumentation
  • Language: Not determined
  • DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/16/08/p08034
  • ISSN: 1748-0221
  • Keywords: Mathematical Physics ; Instrumentation
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope operating at the South Pole. The main goal of IceCube is the detection of astrophysical neutrinos and the identification of their sources. High-energy muon neutrinos are observed via the secondary muons produced in charge current interactions with nuclei in the ice. Currently, the best performing muon track directional reconstruction is based on a maximum likelihood method using 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. However at energies &gt;1 TeV the light yield from muons is dominated by stochastic showers. This paper 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 loss profile leads to an improvement of the muon angular resolution of up to 20% for through-going tracks and up to a factor 2 for starting tracks over existing algorithms. Additionally, the procedure to estimate the directional reconstruction uncertainty has been improved to be more robust against numerical errors.</jats:p>