Meson production in air showers and the search for light exotic particles

Abstract

Decays of mesons produced in cosmic ray induced air showers in Earth's atmosphere can lead to a flux of light exotic particles which can be detected in underground experiments. We evaluate the energy spectra of the light neutral mesons ${\pi }^0$, $\eta$, ${\rho }^0$, $\omega$, $\varphi$ and $J/\psi$ produced in interactions of cosmic ray protons and helium nuclei with air using QCD inspired event generators. Summing up the mesons produced in the individual hadronic interactions of air showers, we obtain the resulting fluxes of undecayed mesons. As an application, we re-consider the case of millicharged particles created in the electromagnetic decay channels of neutral mesons.

arXiv comment13 pages, 6 pdf figures, ancillary files contain tabulated fluxes of undecayed atmospheric mesons; v2: added clarifications, improved readablility of figures, accepted version

References in corpus (29)

• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• Microscopic Models for Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• An absorption profile centred at 78 megahertz in the sky-averaged spectrum
• Searching for Dark Matter Annihilation from Milky Way Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies with Six Years of Fermi-LAT Data
• Monte Carlo treatment of hadronic interactions in enhanced Pomeron scheme: I. QGSJET-II model
• Updated Bounds on Milli-Charged Particles
• The Borexino detector at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
• The Dark Photon
• Novel direct detection constraints on light dark matter
• Search for Millicharged Particles at SLAC
• Turning off the Lights: How Dark is Dark Matter?
• Supernova Relic Neutrino Search at Super-Kamiokande
• Light Dark Matter at Neutrino Experiments
• Tighter Limits on Dark Matter Explanations of the Anomalous EDGES 21cm Signal
• Millicharged particles in neutrino experiments
• Improved Limits on Millicharged Particles Using the ArgoNeuT Experiment at Fermilab
• Bounds on heavy sterile neutrinos revisited
• New Constraints on Millicharged Particles from Cosmic-ray Production
• Searching in the dark: the hunt for the dark photon
• Search for fractionally charged particles in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Light Dark Matter from Inelastic Cosmic Ray Collisions
• Inclusive dielectron spectra in p+p collisions at 3.5 GeV
• Dark matter searches with cosmic antideuterons: status and perspectives
• CHAMP Cosmic Rays
• Dark Cosmic Rays
• New constraints on Heavy Neutral Leptons from Super-Kamiokande data
• Revisiting cosmic ray antinuclei fluxes with a new coalescence model
• Detecting light long-lived particle produced by cosmic ray
• Reacceleration of charged dark matter

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Revisiting the Fermionic Dark Matter Absorption on Electron Target
• Searching for light long-lived neutralinos at Super-Kamiokande
• Passage of millicharged particles in the electron beam-dump: refining constraints from SLACmQ and estimating sensitivity of NA64e
• Search for millicharged particles in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13.6$ TeV
• Millicharged Particles from the Heavens: Single- and Multiple-Scattering Signatures
• Atmospheric resonant production for light dark sectors