MY RESEARCH PROJECT

Introduction

AMANDA is a telescope, but not in the typical sense of the word. Instead of gathering optical, infrared, or x-ray light, AMANDA is designed as a "neutrino" telescope. Incoming cosmic rays (consisting primarily of protons) interact with the molecules in the atmosphere to produce D particles, which, in turn, decay into muons and neutrinos. Since neutrinos are extremely difficult to detect directly, we set out to detect the number of muons produced in the atmosphere. Over a broad range of energy, 10 Gev-200 TeV, the number of muons produced is the same as the number of neutrinos produced. Higher energy neutrinos are produced extragalatically from AGN (active galactic nuclei), GRB (Gamma Ray Bursts), and Quasars. These neutrinos have much, much higher energies than the conventional ones produced in the atmosphere. One of the goals of AMANDA is to try to find a flux of high-energy neutrinos. An obstacle arises when sorting through the data: how can one distinguish the lower-energy muons from the higher-energy ones? The goal of my research was to find a method separating the prompt muons from the more abundant conventional (background) muons.