Studying the Use of Michel Electrons to Calibrate PINGU
Open Access
- Author:
- Lutton, Dylan Dale
- Area of Honors:
- Physics
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Douglas Cowen, Thesis Supervisor
Prof. Richard Wallace Robinett, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Physics
IceCube
PINGU
Neutrino
Michel electron - Abstract:
- The IceCube Neutrino Detector System, located in the South Pole, is the largest neutrino detector system ever made. A proposed addition to it is the Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU), which would use more densely spaced detectors to allow for measurements of lower energy neutrinos, making it more sensitive to the neutrino mass hierarchy. A simulation of the PINGU detector system is used to determine its ability in making these measurements and to calibrate its reconstruction of neutrino events. The muon neutrino is one of the three different flavors of neutrino, and will, upon undergoing a charged current interaction, release a muon that will later decay into a Michel electron. In this thesis we use the simulation of PINGU to see whether the Michel electron can be used to calibrate its reconstructions. Using ROOT to perform analysis on the data returned from our simulation, I found that we can expect that 0.2% of muon neutrino events in PINGU should be highly suitable for use in calibration via the Michel electron. If a muon from a muon neutrino charged current event stops beneath one of our DOMs, then the Michel electron that it later decays into will give light to this DOM. If we have multiple events where we know the time that their respective muons stopped at and have reconstructed them to have an endpoint under a DOM, then the light we expect to see from all these events put together will line up with the muon average lifetime. Unfortunately, we were unable to detect this in our muon neutrino data. An alternate method is proposed which uses the double pulse structure of light that a muon emitting Cherenkov radiation that stops under a DOM and decays into a Michel electron (which will also emit Cherenkov radiation) produces, which can be seen by looking at individual muon neutrino events where the created muon is seen to stop under a DOM.