Cosmic Ray Composition from the 40-string IceCube/IceTop Detectors

Authors

IceCube Collaboration
Karen Andeen, Marquette UniversityFollow
K. Rawlins, University of Alaska - Anchorage
T. Feusels, Gent University

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Language

eng

Publication Date

2011

Publisher

Institute of High Energy Physics

Source Publication

32nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Beijing 2011

Abstract

The IceCube Observatory at the South Pole is composed of a deep detector and a surface detector, IceTop, both of which use Cherenkov light to detect charged particles. Cosmic ray air showers contain multiple particle components: in particular, electrons and muons detectable at the surface by IceTop, and high-energy muons detectable by the deep IceCube detector, in relative amounts that depend on the primary cosmic ray mass. Thus, coincident events can be used to measure both the energy and the mass composition. Here, a neural network is trained with simulations to map observables from the two detectors (input) into energy and mass estimators (output). Experimental data is then run through the same network, to measure the energy spectrum and average logarithmic mass of cosmic rays in the energy range of about 1-30 PeV.

Comments

Published version. 32nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Beijing 2011, Vol. 1, (2011): 101-104. Publisher link. © 2011 Institute of High Energy Physics .

K. Andeen was affiliated with University of Wisconsin, Madison at the time of publication.

Recommended Citation

IceCube Collaboration; Andeen, Karen; Rawlins, K.; and Feusels, T., "Cosmic Ray Composition from the 40-string IceCube/IceTop Detectors" (2011). Physics Faculty Research and Publications. 178.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/physics_fac/178