Author/Authors :
Abbasi، نويسنده , , R. and Abdou، نويسنده , , Y. and Ackermann، نويسنده , , M. and Adams، نويسنده , , J. and Aguilar، نويسنده , , J.A. and Ahlers، نويسنده , , M. and Altmann، نويسنده , , D. and Andeen، نويسنده , , K. and Auffenberg، نويسنده , , J. and Bai، نويسنده , , X. and Baker، نويسنده , , M. and Barwick، نويسنده , , S.W. and Baum، نويسنده , , V. and Bay، نويسنده , , R. and Beattie، نويسنده , , K. and Beatty، نويسنده , , J.J. and Bechet، نويسنده , , S، نويسنده ,
Abstract :
The measurement of muon energy is critical for many analyses in large Cherenkov detectors, particularly those that involve separating extraterrestrial neutrinos from the atmospheric neutrino background. Muon energy has traditionally been determined by measuring the specific energy loss (dE/dx) along the muonʹs path and relating the dE/dx to the muon energy. Because high-energy muons ( E μ > 1 TeV ) lose energy randomly, the spread in dE/dx values is quite large, leading to a typical energy resolution of 0.29 in log 10 ( E μ ) for a muon observed over a 1 km path length in the IceCube detector. In this paper, we present an improved method that uses a truncated mean and other techniques to determine the muon energy. The muon track is divided into separate segments with individual dE/dx values. The elimination of segments with the highest dE/dx results in an overall dE/dx that is more closely correlated to the muon energy. This method results in an energy resolution of 0.22 in log 10 ( E μ ) , which gives a 26% improvement. This technique is applicable to any large water or ice detector and potentially to large scintillator or liquid argon detectors.
Keywords :
Muon energy , dE/dx , Neutrino energy , Truncated mean , Cherenkov , IceCube detector
