Energy reconstruction methods in the IceCube neutrino telescope

Journal article

Accurate measurement of neutrino energies is essential to many of the scientific goals of large-volume neutrino telescopes. The fundamental observable in such detectors is the Cherenkov light produced by the transit through a medium of charged particles created in neutrino interactions. The amount of light emitted is proportional to the deposited energy, which is approximately equal to the neutrino energy for $\nu_e$ and $\nu_\mu$ charged-current interactions and can be used to set a lower bound on neutrino energies and to measure neutrino spectra statistically in other channels. Here we describe methods and performance of reconstructing charged-particle energies and topologies from the observed Cherenkov light yield, including techniques to measure the energies of uncontained muon tracks, achieving average uncertainties in electromagnetic-equivalent deposited energy of $\sim 15\%$ above 10 TeV.

Authors: Aartsen, MG; Sarkar, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Journal of Instrumentation
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 3
• Pages: P03009-P03009
• Publication date: 2014-03-17
• Acceptance date: 2014-02-10
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/9/03/P03009
• EISSN: 1748-0221
• ISSN: 1748-0221
• Keywords: SBTMR; physics.ins-det; astro-ph.IM