Atmospheric leptons, the search for a prompt component

Abstract

The flux of high-energy (>GeV) neutrinos consists primarily of those produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere. The contribution from extraterrestrial sources is still unknown. Current limits suggest that the observed spectrum is dominated by atmospheric neutrinos up to at least 100 TeV. The contribution of charmed hadrons to the flux of atmospheric neutrinos is important in the context of the search for astrophysical neutrinos because the spectrum of such "prompt" neutrinos is harder than that of "conventional" neutrinos from decay of pions and kaons. The prompt component therefore becomes increasingly important as energy increases. This paper reviews the status of the search for prompt muons and neutrinos with emphasis on the complementary aspects of muons, electron neutrinos and muon neutrinos.

References in corpus (2)

• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• Discrepant hardening observed in cosmic-ray elemental spectra

Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Probing the Galactic Origin of the IceCube Excess with Gamma-Rays
• Demystifying the PeV Cascades in IceCube: Less (Energy) is More (Events)
• Characterization of the Atmospheric Muon Flux in IceCube
• The High-Energy Behavior of Photon, Neutrino and Proton Cross Sections
• On the Charm Contribution to the Atmospheric Neutrino Flux
• IC at IC: IceCube can constrain the intrinsic charm of the proton
• Lowering IceCube's Energy Threshold for Point Source Searches in the Southern Sky
• Establishing the astrophysical origin of a signal in a neutrino telescope
• Diffuse flux of galactic neutrinos and gamma rays
• Origin of the high energy neutrino flux at IceCube