Title: Muon Vertical Depth Intensity Distribution at the South Pole
1 Muon Vertical Depth Intensity Distribution at
the South Pole with AMANDA-II Kimberly
Moody 1 August 2003
2Meet AMANDA-II Antarctic Muon And Neutrino
Detector Array
Located at the Geographic South Pole 677 Optical
Modules (OMs) arranged on 19 strings 1500 to
2000m below the surface AMANDA is a neutrino
telescope...
3 Photons interacting with cosmic background...
Black Hole, Gamma Ray Burst
The Beauty of Neutrinos
Protons deflected...
The neutrino remains unaffected!
4What kind of signal does AMANDA receive? Diffuse
Cosmic Rays (well-modeled) interact with
atmosphere to produce, among other things, low
energy muons.
5What kind of signal does AMANDA receive? Diffuse
Cosmic Rays Prompt Muons (different models
suggest different fluxes the subject of my
research)
6What kinds of signals does AMANDA
receive? Diffuse Cosmic Rays Prompt
Muons High-Energy Neutrinos-bingo!-the tell-tale
particles AMANDA is looking for.
7This way up.
Low Energy Conventional Muons (from kaon and pion
decay)
High Energy Prompt Muon (from charmed meson
decay)
Signals
Atmosphere
Atmospheric Neutrino
Convention Muons (absorbed by Earth)
High Energy Extraterrestrial Neutrino
8Data versus Monte Carlo and Quality Criteria
9Data versus Monte Carlo and Quality Criteria
10Slant Depth Binning Bin1730/cos ?
1
2
3
4
5
1730m
6
7
8
8650m
Slant Depth
11Prompt Muons RQPM, QGSM Most Optimistic Models
Graph Gelmini, Gondolo, Varieschi Measuring the
prompt atmospheric neutrino flux with down-going
muons in neutrinos telescopes (2002)
hep-ph/0209111
12The Results of Our Prompt Muon Search
13Prompt Contamination in First Bins RNpm/Nmc
R(2) 0.106
R(1) 0.0765
Bin 2
Bin 1
14Prompt Muon Contamination in Last Bins RNpm/Nmc
R(7)0.982
R(8)1.55
Bin Eight
Bin Seven
15Intensity by bin, cm-2s-1sr-1
Bin 1
Bin 2
cos ?
cos ?
Bin 4
Bin 3
cos ?
cos ?
16Intensity by bin, cm-2s-1sr-1
Bin 5
Bin 6
cos ?
cos ?
cos ?
cos ?
17Many Thanks To National Science
Foundation The AMANDA Collaboration Fellow
Charlie's Angels Dr. Bob Benjamin Dr. Paolo
Desiati