Major
Physics
Anticipated Graduation Year
2022
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory consists of 5,160 sensors called Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) buried between one and a half to two and a half kilometers under the surface of the ice of Antarctica. The DOMs are frozen in 86 vertical strings covering a kilometer cube in volume. The experiment is designed to detect and measure astrophysical neutrinos.
While IceCube is a neutrino detector, the data is dominated by a background of cosmic rays. This background data is suitable for high-statistics studies of cosmic rays in the southern sky. Long-term observations of cosmic rays by IceCube experiments have demonstrated the presence of a significant anisotropy in the cosmic ray intensity in the energy range between 14TeV to a few PeV. The detector has been collecting data in its completed form since 2011. In this work, we will use cosmic ray data recorded by the detector (IC86) from May 2011 to May 2021 to produce skymaps and study the time dependence of the cosmic ray anisotropy in the southern hemisphere at the TeV energy range.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Dr. Rasha Abbasi
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Time Dependence of Cosmic Ray Anisotropy
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory consists of 5,160 sensors called Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) buried between one and a half to two and a half kilometers under the surface of the ice of Antarctica. The DOMs are frozen in 86 vertical strings covering a kilometer cube in volume. The experiment is designed to detect and measure astrophysical neutrinos.
While IceCube is a neutrino detector, the data is dominated by a background of cosmic rays. This background data is suitable for high-statistics studies of cosmic rays in the southern sky. Long-term observations of cosmic rays by IceCube experiments have demonstrated the presence of a significant anisotropy in the cosmic ray intensity in the energy range between 14TeV to a few PeV. The detector has been collecting data in its completed form since 2011. In this work, we will use cosmic ray data recorded by the detector (IC86) from May 2011 to May 2021 to produce skymaps and study the time dependence of the cosmic ray anisotropy in the southern hemisphere at the TeV energy range.