The Effect of Hole Ice on the Propagation and Detection of Light in IceCube

Understand

IceCube is a neutrino observatory at Earth's South Pole that uses glacial ice as detector medium.

• Secondary particles from neutrino interactions produce Cherenkov light, which is detected by an array of photo detectors deployed within the ice.
• In distinction from the glacial bulk ice, hole ice is the refrozen water in the drill holes around the detector modules, and is expected to have different optical properties than the bulk ice.
• Aiming to improve detector precision, this study presents a new method to simulate the propagation of light through the hole ice, introducing several new calibration parameters.