WavePID: Studies of DOM-level waveform timing for track vs. cascade discrimination in IceCube at 5-100 GeV

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Eulig, Steven Young
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Eulig, Steven Young
author_facet Eulig, Steven Young
contents The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov detector embedded in the Antarctic ice at the South Pole. Its densely instrumented sub-array and dedicated low-energy analyses provide sensitivity to neutrinos in the 5-100 GeV range, enabling precision studies of neutrino oscillations and searches for new physics. This work focuses specifically on this low-energy regime, where sparse hit patterns limit the performance of topology-based reconstruction and classification methods. We introduce Waveform-based Particle Identification (WavePID), a statistically rigorous and interpretable likelihood-ratio discriminator for track-cascade separation, built from Monte Carlo templates in timing-aware, physics-motivated observables and validated through dedicated simulations. Applied to both Monte Carlo and 11.1 years of IceCube data, WavePID suggests improved cascade purity by about 5 percentage points at a fixed 20% down-selection rate relative to the current leading cascade selection, while maintaining Data-MC agreement within detector systematics. The approach is compact and robust to sparse observations, demonstrating the value of waveform-level timing for low-energy reconstruction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_17788
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WavePID: Studies of DOM-level waveform timing for track vs. cascade discrimination in IceCube at 5-100 GeV
Eulig, Steven Young
Instrumentation and Detectors
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Experiment
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov detector embedded in the Antarctic ice at the South Pole. Its densely instrumented sub-array and dedicated low-energy analyses provide sensitivity to neutrinos in the 5-100 GeV range, enabling precision studies of neutrino oscillations and searches for new physics. This work focuses specifically on this low-energy regime, where sparse hit patterns limit the performance of topology-based reconstruction and classification methods. We introduce Waveform-based Particle Identification (WavePID), a statistically rigorous and interpretable likelihood-ratio discriminator for track-cascade separation, built from Monte Carlo templates in timing-aware, physics-motivated observables and validated through dedicated simulations. Applied to both Monte Carlo and 11.1 years of IceCube data, WavePID suggests improved cascade purity by about 5 percentage points at a fixed 20% down-selection rate relative to the current leading cascade selection, while maintaining Data-MC agreement within detector systematics. The approach is compact and robust to sparse observations, demonstrating the value of waveform-level timing for low-energy reconstruction.
title WavePID: Studies of DOM-level waveform timing for track vs. cascade discrimination in IceCube at 5-100 GeV
topic Instrumentation and Detectors
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Experiment
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17788