Secondary decays in atmospheric charm contributions to the flux of muons and muon neutrinos

Abstract

We present a calculation of the fluxes of muons and muon neutrinos from the decays of pions and kaons that are themselves the decay products of charmed particles produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray-air collisions. Using the perturbative cross section for charm production, these lepton fluxes are two to three orders of magnitude smaller than the fluxes from the decays of pions and kaons directly produced in cosmic ray-air collisions. Intrinsic charm models do not significantly alter our conclusions, nor do models with a charm cross section enhanced in the region above an incident cosmic ray energy of 1 TeV.

IceCube can constrain the intrinsic charm of the proton

“…II Calculations of neutrino fluxes: The earliest prompt neutrino calculations employed a proton-only cosmic ray flux known as the "broken power-law" [61,62,68,102,103]. Recent observations of cosmic ray flux indicate a mixed composition [104][105][106]: the Gaisser 2012 fit [104] with (i) the third component being proton (H3P), or (ii) mixed (H3A), and the Stanev et al, 2014 fit [106] fit with (iii) three (H14A), or (iv) four cosmic ray populations (H14B).…”

Charmed hadron production in pp collision

“…Although the average multiplicities of different charmed hadrons are very small, they are not inconceivably inconsiderable, because regarding CR showers in the atmosphere, the extremely rare cases of the charmed hadrons production are also very significant, as they can change the traditional shower behaviour completely [7]. This is due to the fact that, as discussed earlier, charmed hadrons are most notable sources of atmospheric prompt leptons, which are very important in understanding the nature of CR as a whole [1,2]. The average multiplicities of different charmed hadrons under study are not much different and approaches approximately the same value, as the values of ffiffi s p goes on increasing beyond 1000 GeV (Fig.…”

“…At lower energies (up to GeV), the conventional sources of these fluxes are p and K mesons (relatively long lived particles). In the high energy range (multi-TeV) the most notable sources of these fluxes are considered as charmed particles; these are produced in the atmosphere in cosmic ray interactions [1,2]. However to draw a definite conclusion on the fluxes of prompt muons and neutrinos from the available data obtained with surface and underground detectors, we need a sound physical model which should be based on the extrapolating of proper charmed production data obtained at accelerator energies of the order of magnitudes higher for the relevant cosmic ray collisions.…”

IC at IC: IceCube can constrain the intrinsic charm of the proton

“…II Calculations of neutrino fluxes: The earliest prompt neutrino calculations employed a proton-only cosmic ray flux known as the "broken power-law" [62,63,69,103,104]. Recent observations of cosmic ray flux indicate a mixed composition [105][106][107]: the Gaisser 2012 fit [105] with (i) the third component being proton (H3P), or (ii) mixed (H3A), and the Stanev et al, 2014 fit [107] fit with (iii) three (H14A), or (iv) four cosmic ray populations (H14B).…”