Sensitivity of high-energy neutrino telescopes

Abstract

The sensitivity of high-energy neutrino telescopes, in detecting μ′s produced in the interactions in the Earth of\(\nu _\mu ,\bar \nu _\mu \) of astrophysical origin, was calculated, via a Monte, Carlo program, where the most recent parametrizations of the nucleon parton distribution functions have been taken into account in the simulation of the\(\nu _\mu ,cc,\bar \nu _\mu cc\) events. The dependence of the sensitivity on the parameters of the detector (energy thresholdEth and angular resolutionσR) as well as on the source spectral index γ was determined. It was shown that, for energy threshold in the range 6 GeV≤Eth≤100 GeV and angular resolutionσR=0.5-1.0°, the sensitivity does not critically depend on the spectral index γ. The hope is to use the results in designing new installations.