Software for IceCube: Object-Oriented Programming

Tannus Joubert
Southern University A & M College
Physics Major

Mentor: Spencer Klein
Nuclear Science Division
Summer 2004

IceCube is a high-energy neutrino detector, which will search for astrophysical sources of neutrinos at the South Pole by using ice as the detection medium. These neutrinos collide with ice producing showers of charged particles, which generate Cerenkov radiation. The neutrino energy is determined by reconstructing events from the arrival times and locations of Cerenkov photons. The purpose of this project was to use object-oriented programming in creating or developing a software module. The software module was used to make the geometry for the detector by reading in the IceCube geometry from a file. The geometry can be used by various simulations to determine the efficiency and accuracy of neutrino event reconstruction.