The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer high-energy neutrino detector deployed in the Antarctic ice. Two major event classes are charged-current electron and muon neutrino interactions. In this contribution, we discuss the inference of direction and energy for these classes using conditional normalizing flows. They allow to derive a posterior distribution for each individual event based on the raw data that can include systematic uncertainties, which makes them very promising for next-generation reconstructions. For each normalizing flow we use the differential entropy and the KL-divergence to its maximum entropy approximation to interpret the results. The normalizing flows correctly incorporate complex optical properties of the Antarctic ice and their relation to the embedded detector. For showers, the differential entropy increases in regions of high photon absorption and decreases in clear ice. For muons, the differential entropy strongly correlates with the contained track length. Coverage is maintained, even for low photon counts and highly asymmetrical contour shapes. For high-photon counts, the distributions get narrower and become more symmetrical, as expected from the asymptotic theorem of Bernstein-von-Mises. For shower directional reconstruction, we find the region between 1 TeV and 100 TeV to potentially benefit the most from normalizing flows because of azimuth-zenith asymmetries which have been neglected in previous analyses by assuming symmetrical contours. Events in this energy range play a vital role in the recent discovery of the galactic plane diffuse neutrino emission.

翻译：冰立方中微子观测站是部署在南极冰层中的立方千米级高能中微子探测器。两大主要事件类型为带电流电子与缪子中微子相互作用。本文探讨了利用条件归一化流对这些事件的方向和能量进行推断的方法。该方法能够基于包含系统不确定性的原始数据推导出每个事件的後验分布，使其成为下一代重建中极具前景的技术。针对每个归一化流，我们使用微分熵及其与最大熵近似之间的KL散度来解释结果。归一化流正确融合了南极冰层复杂的光学特性及其与嵌入式探测器的关联。对于级联事件，微分熵在高光子吸收区域增大，在清澈冰层区域减小；对于缪子事件，微分熵与所含径迹长度高度相关。即使在光子计数低且轮廓形状高度不对称的情况下，覆盖率仍得以保持。当光子计数高时，分布变窄且更趋对称，符合伯恩斯坦-冯·米塞斯渐近定理。对于级联方向重建，我们发现1TeV至100TeV能量区间可能从归一化流中获益最大，因为该区域存在方位角-天顶角不对称性，而此前分析中通过假设对称轮廓忽略了这一特征。此能量范围内的事件在近期银河系平面弥散中微子辐射的发现中发挥着关键作用。