Institute of Experimental Physics
Topic
Development of transport software for neutrino telescopes of the KM3NeT experiment and its implementation into the general simulation framework of the experiment
PhD. program
Nuclear and subnuclear physics
Year of admission
2025
Name of the supervisor
RNDr. Blahoslav Pastirčák, CSc.
Contact:
Receiving school
Faculty of Science, P.J. Safarik University
Annotation
The KM3Net experiment is primarily focused on searching for galactic and extragalactic neutrino sources. It uses a high-energy neutrino telescope, consisting of a 1 km long garland network of scintillation detectors submerged in the water of the Mediterranean Sea. It uses water to detect Cherenkov radiation from secondary particles produced by high-energy neutrinos in or near a sensitive volume. Its main scientific goal is to map the sky in the high-energy neutrino region in the southern hemisphere, including the region of the Galactic center. The work will be part of a broader task focused on the simulations and analysis of muon treks produced by the astrophysical neutrino flux in the Earth's atmosphere and its differentiation from the background produced by other sources in the KM3Net experiment measurements. The physical simulations for the KM3Net experiment are performed in three main steps. Simulations of atmospheric muon flow at sea level, muon transport to the detector level, simulations of the response of the apparatus to Cherenkov radiation of muons, taking into account the work of the telescope's electronic systems. All steps are performed in the general simulation framework gSeaGen. The doctoral student's work is a partial task in the second step of the simulation chain. He will develop software in C++ connecting simulated data from CORSIKA with input to simulation packages for further transport of secondary muons by water to the ORCA and ARCA detectors of the KM3Net experiment. Currently, the collaboration uses the older Fortran package MUSIC for this transport, which needs to be replaced by a modern object-oriented software called PROPOSAL, which will require modification of the entire chain. Both of these approaches differ physically and in terms of programming. The plan is to develop a new propagation software and subsequently, to compare and analyze it in detail with the previous one. It is highly desirable to expand the propagation software to include the propagation of tau neutrinos (previously unused) using the gSeaGen applications TAUSIC and TAUOLA.