THE AGN NEUTRINO SOURCES DISCOVERY POTENTIAL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA TELESCOPES

In this Ph.D. work we focused on the Monte Carlo simulations of neutrino detection, in particular we have considered the neutrinos coming from AGNs. The neutrino telescopes analyzed were ANTARES and the future KM3NeT; for the ANTARES simulation packages the Monte Carlo simulation chain was implemented in Lyon computer cluster, while for KM3NeT simulation chain we used the PISA GRID computer cluster. The first step was to determine the useful criteria in order to select the best AGN neutrino emitters. The second step of our analysis was to calculate the efficiency parameters (Effective Area, Angular Resolution) of Mediterranean sea telescopes for neutrino events reconstruction; in particular we have considered neutrino emission from Centaurus A and M87 . Afterwards we have deduced the neutrino spectra from these sources considering the high energy gamma ray data collected by different experiments; several gamma rays spectra have been analyzed. Then, we have introduced the neutrino expected flux in the two different Monte Carlo chains ( for ANTARES and KM3NeT) in order to obtain the neutrino event rate in one year of life-time experiments. The last step was the calculation of signal to noise ratio; the backgrounds considered were : the atmospheric neutrino and the diffuse cosmic neutrino. For this final step we have concentrated only in the reconstructed neutrino events within a solid angle formed by the surface base of a cone centered in the source and with an open angle of 1°.