Heidelberg 2007 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 401: Kosmische Strahlung III

T 401.6: Talk

Thursday, March 8, 2007, 18:00–18:15, INF 308 Gr. HS

Investigation of backgrounds for horizontal neutrino showers at ultra-high energies^* — •Oana Tascau¹, Ralph Engel², Karl-Heinz Kampert¹, Markus Risse¹, and Christopher Wiebusch¹ for the Pierre Auger collaboration — ¹Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Fachbereich Physik, Gaußstr. 20, 42097 Wuppertal — ²Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institut für Kernphysik, Postfach 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe

The Pierre Auger Observatory can be used to search for neutrino-induced air showers. A possible signature is a near-horizontal event developing very deeply in the atmosphere (at depths exceeding a few thousand g/cm²). We study the background to such events from: (1) high-energy muons produced in primary proton events, which may propagate deeply into the atmosphere; (2) primary photons, which may develop late due to a suppression of the Bethe-Heitler cross-section by the LPM effect. For the investigations, we use high-statistics shower libraries generated on the ALiCEnext computer cluster at the University of Wuppertal. The rates of background events are compared with various flux models of ultra-high energy neutrino production.

^* Gefördert mit Mitteln der BMBF Verbundforschung Astroteilchenphysik.