1. Sensitivity of the IceCube detector to astrophysical sources of high energy muon neutrinos
- Author
-
George Japaridze, I. Taboada, P. Miocinovic, M. Hellwig, R Koch, R. M. Gunasingha, H. G. Sander, R. Paulos, R. C. Bay, Michael Stamatikos, R. Ganugapati, T. Neunhöffer, Albrecht Karle, B. Collin, D. F. Cowen, Marek Kowalski, Christian Spiering, J. A. Goodman, K. Rawlins, K. Schinarakis, C. Pérez de los Heros, T. Becka, P. Niessen, P. B. Price, T. O. B. Schmidt, I. Liubarsky, James Madsen, Soebur Razzaque, K. Helbing, T. Castermans, Jodi Cooley, A. Biron, Elisa Resconi, N. Kitamura, D. Hubert, Kurt Woschnagg, Peter Mészáros, Paul Evenson, S. Schlenstedt, M. Kestel, R. G. Stokstad, C. H. Wiebusch, S. Hundertmark, S. Tilav, K. H. Sulanke, C. De Clercq, R. Wischnewski, A. J. Smith, Dmitry Chirkin, C. Wiedemann, T. DeYoung, Jean Gallagher, J. I. Lamoureux, G. W. Sullivan, A. C. Pohl, S. Richter, Xinhua Bai, Ph. Herquet, L. Köpke, T. Burgess, D. Z. Besson, R. Morse, R. Schwarz, E. Blaufuss, D. J. Boersma, J. Ahrens, D. Bertrand, K.-H. Becker, D. Steele, K. Hultqvist, J. Cavin, R. H. Minor, Kael Hanson, William Carithers, T. J. Sumner, H. S. Matis, Elisa Bernardini, S. Patton, Ph. Olbrechts, T. Stezelberger, Paolo Desiati, Francis Halzen, R. W. Ellsworth, Wolfgang Rhode, Hakki Ögelman, H. Kawai, H. Leich, S. Böser, C. P. McParland, Olga Botner, R. Hardtke, M. Solarz, A. Goldschmidt, R. Nahnhauer, M. Ribordy, T. Messarius, S. Yoshida, D. Hays, W. Chinowsky, N. van Eijndhoven, Glenn Spiczak, B. Hughey, Gerald Przybylski, R. Ehrlich, T. Hauschildt, Adam Bouchta, R.-R Wang, Allan Hallgren, Wolfgang Wagner, P. O. Hulth, H. Wissing, D. Seckel, Anna Davour, Janet Jacobsen, Todor Stanev, H. Miyamoto, C. Walck, Thomas K. Gaisser, J. Pretz, Y. Minaeva, A. W. Jones, John N. Bahcall, Matthias Leuthold, Othmane Bouhali, D. R. Nygren, P. Steffen, Jan Conrad, T. Feser, Christian Bohm, David A. Schneider, D. Berley, G. C. Hill, Heiko Geenen, and A. R. Fazely
- Subjects
Physics ,Active galactic nucleus ,Muon ,Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors ,Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Detector ,Astrophysics (astro-ph) ,Gamma ray ,FOS: Physical sciences ,IceCube ,Neutrino astronomy ,Neutrino telescope ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Cosmic ray ,Astrophysics ,High Energy Physics::Experiment ,Neutrino ,Gamma-ray burst - Abstract
We present the results of a Monte-Carlo study of the sensitivity of the planned IceCube detector to predicted fluxes of muon neutrinos at TeV to PeV energies. A complete simulation of the detector and data analysis is used to study the detector's capability to search for muon neutrinos from sources such as active galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. We study the effective area and the angular resolution of the detector as a function of muon energy and angle of incidence. We present detailed calculations of the sensitivity of the detector to both diffuse and pointlike neutrino emissions, including an assessment of the sensitivity to neutrinos detected in coincidence with gamma-ray burst observations. After three years of datataking, IceCube will have been able to detect a point source flux of E^2*dN/dE = 7*10^-9 cm^-2s^-1GeV at a 5-sigma significance, or, in the absence of a signal, place a 90% c.l. limit at a level E^2*dN/dE = 2*10^-9 cm^-2s^-1GeV. A diffuse E-2 flux would be detectable at a minimum strength of E^2*dN/dE = 1*10^-8 cm^-2s^-1sr^-1GeV. A gamma-ray burst model following the formulation of Waxman and Bahcall would result in a 5-sigma effect after the observation of 200 bursts in coincidence with satellite observations of the gamma-rays., Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables
- Published
- 2004