Selecting stopping muons with KM3NeT/ORCA
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68407700%3A21670%2F24%3A00389336" target="_blank" >RIV/68407700:21670/24:00389336 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.22323/1.444.0203" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.22323/1.444.0203</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.22323/1.444.0203" target="_blank" >10.22323/1.444.0203</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Selecting stopping muons with KM3NeT/ORCA
Original language description
The KM3NeT collaboration operates two water Cherenkov neutrino telescopes in the Mediterranean sea, ORCA and ARCA. The flux of atmospheric muons produced in cosmic ray air showers forms a background to the main objectives of KM3NeT/ORCA and KM3NeT/ARCA, respectively measuring atmospheric neutrino oscillations and detecting neutrinos from astrophysical sources. A small portion of the atmospheric muons stops inside the detector’s instrumented volume. The stopping muons are 5% of the muons reconstructed using the 6 first strings deployed for ORCA. This still amounts to 1000 events per hour. We present two methods for selecting them, applied on both simulations and data. The first method uses simple cuts on a set of reconstructed variables. The second method uses a machine learning model to classify muons as “stopping” or “crossing”. Both methods allow to reach a high selection purity, close to 95%. Detecting stopping muons can serve many purposes like studying muon decay via the detection of Michel electrons or estimating the flux of atmospheric muons at sea level. This work highlights the accurate reconstruction capabilities of ORCA. The median error on the reconstructed stopping point of selected muons is less than 5 meters, and the median angular deviation is 1°. This is to be compared with the 20 meters horizontal distance between strings and the 9 meters vertical distance between optical modules. Another important result is the excellent agreement between distribution of stopping muons selected in data and in simulations.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
D - Article in proceedings
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
10308 - Astronomy (including astrophysics,space science)
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/LM2023063" target="_blank" >LM2023063: Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane – participation of the Czech Republic</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2024
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Article name in the collection
38th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2023)
ISBN
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ISSN
1824-8039
e-ISSN
1824-8039
Number of pages
10
Pages from-to
1-10
Publisher name
PoS - Proceedings of Science, Sissa Medialab srl
Place of publication
Trieste
Event location
Nagoya
Event date
Jul 26, 2023
Type of event by nationality
WRD - Celosvětová akce
UT code for WoS article
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