Mele, Rosa (2018) Search for exotic neutrino sources with the KM3NeT telescope. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Tipologia del documento:	Tesi di dottorato
Lingua:	English
Titolo:	Search for exotic neutrino sources with the KM3NeT telescope
Autori:	Autore Email Mele, Rosa rmele@na.infn.it
Data:	10 Dicembre 2018
Numero di pagine:	127
Istituzione:	Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Dipartimento:	Fisica
Dottorato:	Fisica
Ciclo di dottorato:	31
Coordinatore del Corso di dottorato:	nome email Capozziello, Salvatore capozzie@na.infn.it
Tutor:	nome email Migliozzi, Pasquale [non definito]
Data:	10 Dicembre 2018
Numero di pagine:	127
Parole chiave:	neutrino, dark matter, photomultiplier, Neutrino Telescope, Montecarlo, KM3NeT, ANTARES, IceCube
Settori scientifico-disciplinari del MIUR:	Area 02 - Scienze fisiche > FIS/04 - Fisica nucleare e subnucleare
Depositato il:	14 Gen 2019 15:38
Ultima modifica:	23 Giu 2020 14:21
URI:	http://www.fedoa.unina.it/id/eprint/12592

Abstract

The neutrino represents the ideal astronomical messenger. Neutrinos travel large distances without absorption and with no deflection by magnetic fields. Having a very small mass and no electric charge, the neutrino is similar to the photon as an astronomical messenger, except for the fact that it interacts on weakly with the matter. For this reason, high energy neutrinos may reach us unscathed from cosmic distances revealing the proprieties of their sources. On the other hand, their weak interactions also make cosmic neutrinos very difficult to detect. In 1960, Markov suggested to detect high energy neutrinos using huge volumes of transparent natural material such as ice or water. High energy astrophysical neutrinos would weakly interact with one of the nucleons of the medium producing charged particle that emit Cherenkov photons which can be detected by a lattice of photomultipliers. The charged produced particles have almost the same direction of the generating neutrino and this allows to point back to the neutrino sources if the muon direction can be precisely reconstructed. The low cross section of the neutrino interactions and the very low predicted astrophysical neutrino flows suggest that these Cherenkov detectors should be very large, on the scale of km3. The ANTARES neutrino telescope, a three dimensional array of photomultipliers distributed over 12 lines, installed in the Mediterranean was completed in May 2008. It is taking data continuously since then. The main goal of the telescope is the search for high energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources. Its position in the Northern hemisphere and the possibility to look at the Galactic Centre has made it especially useful since it is complementary to the IceCube Antarctic telescope. This complementary view can provide a different insight in the cosmic signal observed only by the IceCube Collaboration. The encouraging results obtained by ANTARES and IceCube during their data taking, the importance of synergy between neutrino telescopes in two different hemispheres and the advent of the multimessenger era have suggested the design of a new generation telescope in the northern hemisphere. The new telescope has to be larger than its predecessor ANTARES but must exploit all the experience acquired during the years of ANTARES operations. This new generation telescope, KM3NeT is under construction and will become the largest telescope for neutrinos in the World. In this thesis, we studied the contribution of a combined analysis of of Icecube and ANTARES data in order to exclude the scenario for which the neutrinos detected by the two telescopes derive from a single power-law model. The possibility of detecting the presence of neutrinos generated from the decay of Dark Matter particles with the new generation KM3NeT telescope was then investigated. The last analysis requires the development of a very detailed Montecarlo code for which the potential of the simulation code currently used by the ANTARES and KM3NeT collaborations has been increased integrating the GENHEN code with the tauonic neutrino regeneration process. Since the "eyes" through which the new generation KM3NeT telescope would scrutinize the presence of neutrinos "beyond the single power law" are the PMTs, we perform and complete characterization of the aforesaids in order to measure their characteristics. This will allow to improve the analysis and to correctly simulate their response in the Montecarlo code.

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