Probing cosmic rays with KM3NeT/ARCA neutrino telesvope

The Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT, is a future European research infrastructure that will host the next-generation neutrino telescope. It is made of a huge deep underwater Cerenkov detector with an instrumented volume of several cubic kilometers distributed over two locations in the Mediterranean Sea. Once fully completed, KM3NeT will consist of two large sub​-detectors. The first, named ARCA, will search for very high​-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin. The second, called ORCA, will study the neutrino properties exploiting neutrinos created by cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere. In both cases, arrays of thousands of optical sensors will detect the faint Cerenkov light in the deep sea from charged muons originating from collisions of the neutrinos and water in the vicinity of the detectors. The research PhD position aims at using the high energy atmospheric muons that will be detected by ARCA to probe cosmic rays at very high energy (TeV​‐PeV). Regarding the primary goal of KM3NeT/ARCA (detection of neutrinos of astrophysical origin), the atmospheric muons, which are created by cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere, are useless; they just form an immense irreducible background. Fortunately, they can be used to probe high-energy cosmic rays, which provides an important added-value to the KM3NeT project.