Muon Energy Reconstruction in ANTARES and its Application to the Diffuse Neutrino Flux

摘要

The European collaboration ANTARES aims to operate a large neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea,2400 m deep,40 km from Toulon (France).Muon neutrinos are detected through the muon produced in charged current interactions in the medium surrounding the detector.The Cherenkov light emitted by the muon is registered by a 3D photomultiplier array.Muon energy can be inferred using 3 different methods based on the knowledge of the features of muon energy losses.They result in an energy resolution of a factor approx 2 above 1 TeV.The ANTARES sensitivity to diffuse neutrino flux models is obtained from an energy cut,rejecting most of the atmospheric neutrino background which has a softer spectrum.Fake upgoing events from downgoing atmospheric muons are rejected using dedicated variables.After 1 year of data taking,the ANTARES sensitivity is E~2 dPHI_v/dE_v approx <= 8 centre dot 10~(-8) GeV cm~(-2) s~(-1) sr~(-1) for a 10 string detector and an E~(-2) diffuse flux spectrum.