September 29, 2025 to October 3, 2025
Palazzo del Bo and Centro Culturale San Gaetano
Europe/Rome timezone
Poster Session details online here on the INDICO web site

IceCube PMT efficiency measurement with atmospheric muons

Oct 1, 2025, 12:00 PM
20m
Spazio 35 (Centro Culturale Altinate San Gaetano)

Spazio 35

Centro Culturale Altinate San Gaetano

Contributed Talk Data Science and Detector R&D Data Science and Detector R&D

Speaker

Daniel Durnford (University of Alberta)

Description

The IceCube neutrino observatory - comprised of a cubic kilometer of ice instrumented with over 5000 photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) - has achieved world-leading precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters in recent years. Such measurements inherently perform a simultaneous optical calibration of the detector, constraining relevant systematic uncertainties such as the efficiency of IceCube's PMTs. Independent calibration of this quantity would reinforce future oscillation measurements. In this talk, an in situ PMT efficiency calibration method is presented, with atmospheric muons - detected abundantly in IceCube at several kHz - serving as a “standard candle” light source. A small sample of well-reconstructed, minimum ionizing muon events is procured, and used to measure the PMT efficiency. The current results of this analysis are presented, as well as other potential applications of the aforementioned muon event sample for data-driven validation of event reconstruction algorithms.

Neutrino Properties Somewhat relevant
Neutrino Telescopes & Multi-messenger Not relevant
Neutrino Theory & Cosmology Not relevant
Data Science and Detector R&D Most relevant

Author

Daniel Durnford (University of Alberta)

Presentation materials