Piotr Kalaczyński (NCBJ Warszawa)

Study of cosmic ray muons with KM3NeT

The KM3NeT experiment consists of two underwater Cherenkov neutrino telescopes, currently under construction at two different locations in the Mediterranean Sea. The KM3NeT detectors collect vast amounts of cosmic ray muon data already in their intermediate configurations. This talk describes foundational work done in the muon simulations for KM3NeT, focused on the Monte Carlo (MC) code CORSIKA, and the subsequent results. The MC simulation was used to train and validate machine learning models to perform a task of reconstruction of several observables related to the observed energy and number of muons. The reconstructed quantities were directly used in a study investigating the potential of KM3NeT detectors to observe the component of the atmospheric muon flux coming from decays of short-lived parent particles, called prompt muon flux. The complete KM3NeT detectors should be able to confirm the prompt signal within 4–6 years of operation, perhaps even sooner if the collected data is combined. Currently, the biggest limitation on sensitivity comes from the systematic uncertainties.