Speaker
Description
Cosmic ray interactions with the solar atmosphere are expected to generate energetic neutrinos that might be observable with the neutrino telescopes. These so called solar atmospheric neutrinos are expected to have a distinguishable shape in the energy spectrum compared with atmospheric neutrinos generated in the Earth. The difference originates from the lower atmospheric density on the Sun, which allows secondary particles to decay rather than interact with the medium and lose energy. We present the first search for a signal of solar atmospheric neutrinos, using 8 years of data collected with the worlds largest neutrino telescope IceCube, which shows optimal sensitivity for the energetic neutrinos. To distinguish signal from backgrounds we perform a likelihood analysis using directional and energy spectral information. The analysis method and optimization will be introduced and sensitivities presented.
