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K. Bland (James Madison University), P. Desiati, A. Karle (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
AMANDA is a neutrino telescope located at the South Pole. Using Antarctica's 3 km thick ice as its detecting medium, AMANDA is capable of detecting neutrinos with energies in excess of 100 TeV that might be produced in astrophysical objects. The desired neutrino signals, detected as up-going neutrino-induced muons in the detector, are overwhelmed by a background of atmospheric, or down-going, muons in AMANDA. A study of these atmospheric muons provides a way to better understand the detector respose as well as providing a systematic way of filtering them out of the signal analysis. This current study gives the preliminary conclusions of such an analysis. The atmospheric muon intensity at the center of the AMANDA-II detector has been determined and compared to CORSIKA-simulated atmospheric muon intensity. It has been found that the experimental data agrees well with the simulated data that uses the AMANDA ice model. This work was supported by NSF grant AST-0139563 to University of Wisconsin-Madison for an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program in Astronomy.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.