Interpretation of the Underground Muon Charge Ratio

Abstract

The MINOS experiment has observed a rise in the underground muon charge ratio $r_{\mu }$ = ${\mu }^{+}/{\mu }^{-}$. This ratio can be related to the atmospheric production ratios of ${\pi }^{+}/{\pi }^{-}$ and $K^{+}/K^{-}$. Our analysis indicates that the relevant variable for studying the charge ratio+ $\ecos$, rather than $\emu$. We compare a simple energy dependent parameterization of the rise in the charge ratio with more detailed previously published Monte Carlo simulations and an analytical calculation. We also estimate the size of two previously neglected effects in this context: the charge sign dependency of the dE/dx in rock, and the energy dependence of heavy primaries on the derived $K^{+}/K^{-}$ ratio.

References in corpus (8)

• Atmospheric neutrino flux above 1 GeV
• Flux of Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Calculation of the Flux of Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Measurement of the Atmospheric Muon Spectrum from 20 to 3000 GeV
• A Compilation of High Energy Atmospheric Muon Data at Sea Level
• Measurement of the Atmospheric Muon Charge Ratio at TeV Energies with MINOS
• Atmospheric neutrino flux supported by recent muon experiments
• High-energy expansion of Coulomb corrections to the e+e- photoproduction cross section

Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Influence of hadronic interaction models and the cosmic ray spectrum on the high energy atmospheric muon and neutrino flux
• Measurement of the charge ratio of atmospheric muons with the CMS detector
• Seasonal variation of atmospheric leptons as a probe of charm
• Measurement of the underground atmospheric muon charge ratio using the MINOS Near Detector
• Atmospheric muons charge ratio analysis at the INO-ICAL detector
• Measurement of the Multiple-Muon Charge Ratio in the MINOS Far Detector
• Measurements of the charge ratio and polarization of cosmic-ray muons with the Super-Kamiokande detector
• Astrophysical neutrino results
• Physics of high energy atmospheric muons