Profiles of energetic muons in the atmosphere

Abstract

The production spectrum of high-energy muons as a function of depth in the atmosphere is relevant for understanding properties of event rates in deep detectors. For a given atmospheric profile, cascades of heavy nuclei develop at higher altitude than proton showers, giving rise to larger separation of muons at depth. For a given type of primary cosmic ray, seasonal variations in muon rates reflect the fact that higher temperatures correspond to lower densities and to a relative increase in the ratio of decay to re-interaction of the parent mesons. In this paper, we present a generalization of the Elbert formula that tracks meson decay to muons along the trajectory of the primary cosmic-ray nucleus. The convolution of the production spectrum with a changing atmospheric profile provides the dependence of event rates and sizes of muon bundles on temperature and primary mass. We consider applications to IceCube and also to multiple muon events in the compact underground detectors of MINOS and the NOvA Near Detector.

arXiv comment22 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Astroparticle Physics

References in corpus (13)

• Microscopic Models for Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• Relativistic Hadron-Hadron Collisions in the Ultra-Relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics Model (UrQMD)
• Spectrum of cosmic-ray nucleons and the atmospheric muon charge ratio
• Hadronic interaction model Sibyll 2.3d and extensive air showers
• Cosmic Ray Spectrum and Composition from PeV to EeV Using 3 Years of Data From IceTop and IceCube
• Observation of muon intensity variations by season with the MINOS far detector
• The atmospheric charged kaon/pion ratio using seasonal variation methods
• Observation of muon intensity variations by season with the MINOS Near Detector
• The effect of the geomagnetic field on cosmic ray energy estimates and large scale anisotropy searches on data from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Observation of seasonal variation of atmospheric multiple-muon events in the MINOS Near and Far Detectors
• Observation of seasonal variation of atmospheric multiple-muon events in the NOvA Near Detector
• Seasonal variation of atmospheric muons in IceCube
• Seasonal Variation of Atmospheric Muons

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Atmospheric muons and their variations with temperature
• Observation of Cosmic-Ray Anisotropy in the Southern Hemisphere with 12 yr of Data Collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• Measurement of the mean number of muons with energies above 500 GeV in air showers detected with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• Seasonal Variation of Atmospheric Muons
• Explanation of the seasonal variation of cosmic multiple muon events observed with the NOvA Near Detector