Chasing cosmic tau neutrinos in the abyss

Bormuth, R. (2017)

Doctoral Thesis

In this work the reconstruction of a tau neutrino signal in the KM3NeT detector is discussed. Tau neutrinos leave a two shower signature in the detector, which is a unique signature among all neutrino interactions. By identifying and reconstructing these tau signatures the KM3NeT detector will be able to distinguish all three neutrino flavors. In addition, cosmic tau neutrinos suffer significantly less from atmospheric backgrounds, makign them ideal messengers for cosmic events. The presented reconstruction is the first tau reconstruction for the KM3NeT detector and resulted in a total expected observation rate of half a tau event per year for one unit of the KM3NeT detector.

• Neutrino astronomy
• KM3NeT
• Tau neutrino
• Reconstruction

• All authors: Bormuth, R.
• Editor(s): Bormuth R.
• Supervisor: Jong, M. de
• Co-supervisor: Samtleben, D.F.E.
• Committee: Koffeman, E.N.; Heijboer, A.; Eberl, T.; Eliel, E.R.; Achúcarro, A.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Institute of Physics (LION), Science, Leiden University
• Date: 2017-12-07
• Title of host publication: Casimir PhD Series
• ISBN (print): 9789085933267
• Name: 2017-42