The Devil's Tower: An IceCube Reconstruction Model for Muon Bundles

IceCube is a cubic kilometer scintillating particle detector located in the Antarctic ice. IceCube's primary directive is to investigate and discover astrophysical neutrinos, but is also a plentiful source of cosmic ray data.

Cosmic rays (along with neutrinos) are understood by using charge and time data from photomultiplier tubes to "reconstruct" the tracks made by high-energy particles passing through the detector. This reconstruction models the way in which light propagates from the particles, which occurs in the form of conical Cherenkov wave fronts. The magnitude and timing of the light that is detected is used to infer direction, energy, and size of the particles which IceCube encounters.

Principal among these detected particles are muons. Oftentimes, multiple muons will reach the detector concurrently. In these cases, resultant Cherenkov wave fronts superimpose to become more planar in nature, and are found to reconstruct better when treated as such. This research seeks to create a geometrical model to account for these plane waves. A geometric model has many advantages over current methods, among which are mathematical simplicity, ease of implementation, and ease of analysis. Evaluation of this model has so far shown promise in providing a faster and more simplified method of reconstruction.