Analysis of Atmospheric Muon Bundles with IceCube

Abstract: This work is a preliminary study of the background of a search for dark, long-lived particles in the IceCube detector. The high flux of atmospheric muons in IceCube is considered background to the detector's primary science goal, which is to detect astrophysical neutrinos through the emission of Cherenkov radiation. However, high muon rates may break fresh ground for the detection of hypothetical dark particles. These could be created during the Bremsstrahlung-like interaction of an energetic muon and decay into a muon and an electron. Such an event is expected to produce a characteristic signal in the detector: A track-like signal produced by the Cherenkov-photon emitting muon, followed by a gap due to the electric neutrality of the dark particle. The subsequent decay of the dark particle into a muon produces a further track-like signal. In order to probe the success rate of this endeavor, two precursory statistical analyses are made using simulated data provided by CORSIKA. In order to obtain a clear track-gap signature that is not diluted by other particles, atmospheric muons should preferably travel in a bundle of few to no other muons. The muon multiplicity in incident bundles is estimated. The study reveals that 50% of all muons are single muons at the point of production, while their relative number increases to 70% by the time they reach the detector boundary. A possible background to this search is assumed to be produced by a collinear neutrino interacting after a stop of the muon. The muon may stop due to energy loss or spontaneous decay. In that case, the resulting signal is expected to be identical to the desired track-gap signature. A preliminary background rate is obtained by performing an event selection. The resulting background rate after the selection process is 5e-5 Hz, which is a reasonable result given a neutrino flux of mHz. A more thorough selection taking into account the particle energies as well as IceCube's limited energy resolution is expected to lower the rate.