Speaker
Dr
Marina Manganaro
(University of Rijeka)
Description
MAGIC, a system of two Cherenkov telescopes located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (2200 a.s.l.) in the Canary Island of La Palma, has lately been engaged in an unconventional task: the search for a signature of particle showers induced by earth-skimming cosmic tau neutrinos arising from the ocean, in the PeV to EeV energy range.
When pointing at the Sea, the MAGIC telescopes can collect data in a range of about 5 deg in zenith and 80 deg in azimuth: the analysis of the shower images from 30 hours of data, together with the simulations of upward-going tau neutrino showers, shows that the air showers induced by tau neutrinos can be discriminated from the hadronic background coming from a similar direction. We have calculated the point source acceptance and the expected event rates, assuming an incoming tau neutrino flux consistent with IceCube measurements, and for a sample of generic neutrino fluxes from photo-hadronic interactions in AGNs and GRBs. A 90% C.L. upper limit on the tau-neutrino point source flux of 2.0x10^-4 GeV cm^-2 s^-1 has been obtained. The presented results can also be important for future Cherenkov experiments such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array. This next generation ground-based observatory can have a much better possibility to detect tau neutrinos, given its larger FOV and much larger effective area.
Primary author
Dr
Marina Manganaro
(University of Rijeka)
Co-authors
Dariusz Gora
(DESY)
Dr
Dorota Sobczynska
(University of Lodz)
Prof.
Elisa Bernardini
(DESY)
Dr
Javier Rico
(IFAE-BIST)
MAGIC Collaboration
Dr
Martin Will
(Max-Planck-Institut für Physik)
Michele Doro
(PD)
Dr
Saverio Lombardi
(INAF-OAR and ASI Science Data Center, Rome, Italy)
