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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 95: Kosmische Strahlung 3

T 95.6: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 18:00–18:15, M118

Down-going neutrinos in the Pierre Auger Observatory — •Dariusz Gora^1,2, Marco Haag¹, Markus Roth¹, and Alessio Tamburro¹ — ¹Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie (KIT) — ²Institute of Nuclear Physics PAN, Krakow, Poland

The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory is sensitive to ultra high energy (UHE) neutrinos of all flavours and directions ranging from few degrees below the horizon (up-going) to about 70 degrees above the horizon (down-going). Although the largest contribution to the total expected event rate comes from the so-called “earth-skimming” up-going tau neutrinos, the contribution of down-going neutrinos can not be neglected. Extensive air showers induced by down-going neutrinos are characterized by very elongated and asymmetric footprints and a significant electromagnetic component. Electrons and gammas produce broad timing signals, whereas inclined hadronic showers give rise to narrower signals mostly due to the surviving secondary muons. In order to study the detector response of the surface array of the Pierre Auger Observatory, a MC chain to simulate down-going neutrino-induced showers for all flavours was derived. A set of revelant observables was determined to discriminate neutrino-induced showers from the background of very inclined hadronic showers and the neutrino identification efficiency was studied. Finally the contribution of different interaction channels to the expected event rate was calculated.