Physics of high energy atmospheric muons

Abstract

In the first part of the talk the interesting new results of MINOS, OPERA and CMS collaborations (connected with the observational evidence of the rise in the muon charge ratio at muon energies around 1 TeV) are briefly discussed from theoretical point of view. A short review of charge asymmetric effects in muon energy losses is given. In the second part of the talk, the modern theoretical approaches to the problem of heavy quark production in high energy nucleon-nucleus interactions are briefly considered (color dipole formalism, saturation models). The recent new theoretical developments in the ancient problem of intrinsic charm are also discussed.

Based on the invited talk on the XVI International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2010), Batavia, IL, USA (28 June - 2 July 2010), 7 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Computing Quark and Gluon Distribution Functions for Very Large Nuclei
• Prompt neutrino fluxes from atmospheric charm
• High energy pA collisions in the color glass condensate approach II. Quark production
• The Charm Parton Content of the Nucleon
• Gluon Shadowing and Heavy Flavor Production off Nuclei
• From DIS to proton-nucleus collisions in the Color Glass Condensate model
• Looking for intrinsic charm in the forward region at BNL RHIC and CERN LHC
• Interpretation of the Underground Muon Charge Ratio
• Measurement of the atmospheric muon charge ratio with the OPERA detector
• About possible contribution of intrinsic charm component to inclusive spectra of charmed mesons
• Open Charm Production in pp and Heavy Ion Collisions in QCD