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Stuck String Analysis Summary
9 May 2000
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String 17 became "stuck" while being deployed in January. Jim Madsen and I ran some Monte Carlo to get an idea of how the stuck string affects the effective telescope area for 1 TeV and 100 TeV upgoing (-1 < cos(zenith) < 0) muons.
To get an idea of the new detector response, we simulated a geometry with the stuck string as it is was deployed, as well as a geometry where the stuck string was removed alltogether. These are compared to a geometry where string 17 is in it's planned location (the "ideal" B19 detector).
The following results are for 100 TeV upgoing muons:
The stuck string increases the effective area by 10.6% at trigger level. Removing the string decreases the effective area by 3.4% at trigger level. The increase is not completely surprising since what is important at trigger level is the projected area of the detector along the muon direction..
The stuck string decreases the effective area by 4.9% for events that reconstruct to better than 3 degrees. Removing the stuck string decreases the effective area by 11.5% for events that reconstruct to better than 3 degrees.
The monte carlo assumes that the ice is the same in the location of the stuck string as it is in the rest of the detector. This is not a good assumption. As such, the behavior of the real detector is probably somewhere between the limits presented above.
The plots below show the effective area vs. zenith angle for all three detector configurations. The solid line represents the ideal B-19 detector, the dashed line represents the actual detector with stuck string, and the dotted line represents the detector with string 17 removed alltogether.
We also simulated 1 TeV muons (not including the case of string 17 completely gone). To see these results and more details of this analysis, see the previous posting.
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