Prometheus: An Open-Source Neutrino Telescope Simulation

TL;DR

Prometheus is an open-source, flexible simulation tool for neutrino telescopes that models neutrino interactions, light propagation, and event recording in ice or water environments, aiding in detector design and analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a new, user-friendly simulation package that supports arbitrary geometries and efficient data handling for neutrino telescope research.

Findings

Simulates neutrino interactions and light propagation accurately.

Supports arbitrary detector geometries in ice or water.

Outputs data in a compact, accessible format.

Abstract

Neutrino telescopes are gigaton-scale neutrino detectors comprised of individual light-detection units. Though constructed from simple building blocks, they have opened a new window to the Universe and are able to probe center-of-mass energies that are comparable to those of collider experiments. \prometheus{} is a new, open-source simulation tailored for this kind of detector. Our package, which is written in a combination of \texttt{C++} and \texttt{Python} provides a balance of ease of use and performance and allows the user to simulate a neutrino telescope with arbitrary geometry deployed in ice or water. \prometheus{} simulates the neutrino interactions in the volume surrounding the detector, computes the light yield of the hadronic shower and the out-going lepton, propagates the photons in the medium, and records their arrival times and position in user-defined regions. Finally, \prometheus{} events are serialized into a \texttt{parquet} file, which is a compact and interoperational file format that allows prompt access to the events for further analysis.