Calibration of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

TL;DR

This paper discusses calibration efforts for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, aiming to improve detector performance understanding, which enhances the accuracy of neutrino measurements and informs future detector designs.

Contribution

It presents calibration studies of hardware and ice optical properties, advancing understanding of detector systematics for IceCube and future extensions.

Findings

Enhanced calibration methods for hardware components.

Improved models of ice optical properties.

Reduced systematic uncertainties in neutrino detection.

Abstract

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory instruments roughly one cubic kilometer of deep, glacial ice below the geographic South Pole with 5160 optical sensors to register the Cherenkov light of passing relativistic, charged particles. Since its construction was completed in 2010, a wide range of analyses has been performed. Those include, among others, the discovery of a high energetic astrophysical neutrino flux, competitive measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters and world-leading limits on dark matter detection. With ever-increasing statistics the influence of insufficiently known aspects of the detector performance start to limit the potential gain of future analyses. This thesis presents calibration studies on both the hardware characteristics as well as the optical properties of the instrumented ice. Improving the knowledge of the detector systematics and the methods to study them does not only aid IceCube but also inform the design of potential future IceCube extensions.