Measurement of the cosmic ray Moon shadow with the ANTARES detector.

Matteo Sanguineti,Tommaso Chiarusi,M De Vincenzi,A Morselli,A Capone

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201920901037

Abstract

The ANTARES detector is the largest neutrino telescope currently in operation in Mediterranean sea. One of the main goals of the ANTARES telescope is the search for point-like neutrino sources, so both the pointing accuracy and the angular resolution of the detector need a proper direct estimation. One possibility to evaluate the pointing performance of the detector is to analyse the shadow of the Moon, i.e. the deficit in the atmospheric muon flux in the direction of the Moon induced by absorption of cosmic rays. The ANTARES data taken between 2007 and 2016 shows aMoon shadow evidence of 3.5σ significance. This is the first measurement of the ANTARES angular resolution and absolute pointing for atmospheric muons using a celestial calibration source. The presented results confirm the good pointing performance of the detector as well as the predicted angular resolution.

Highlights

The study of the Universe using cosmic neutrino as messanger opened a new era of astrophysics
One of the main goals of the ANTARES telescope is the search for point-like neutrino sources, so both the pointing accuracy and the angular resolution of the detector need a proper direct estimation
One possibility to evaluate the pointing performance of the detector is to analyse the shadow of the Moon, i.e. the deficit in the atmospheric muon flux in the direction of the Moon induced by absorption of cosmic rays

Summary

Introduction

The study of the Universe using cosmic neutrino as messanger opened a new era of astrophysics. Neutrino are a complementary probe with respect to other messengers such as multi-wavelength electromagnetic radiation, charged cosmic rays and gravitational waves allowing the observation of the interior of the astrophysical sources and the far Universe. The energy threshold for muons detectable at the depth of the ANTARES telescope is about 500 GeV when they are at the sea surface level, most of them with energy above 1 TeV. Primaries which are progenitors of such highly energetic muons are practically not affected by the Earth geomagnetic field. This assumption of large rigidity holds for the secondary muons detected by the ANTARES detector, they can be exploited in the study of the Moon shadow without introducing any bias

Moon shadow analysis optimization

Results

Conclusions