Forward production of prompt neutrinos from charm in the atmosphere and at high energy colliders

Abstract

The high-energy atmospheric neutrino flux is dominated by neutrinos from the decays of charmed hadrons produced in the forward direction by cosmic ray interactions with air nuclei. We evaluate the charm contributions to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux as a function of the center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ of the hadronic collision and of the center-of-mass rapidity $y$ of the produced charm hadron. Uncertainties associated with parton distribution functions are also evaluated as a function of $y$. We find that the $y$ coverage of LHCb for forward heavy-flavour production, complemented by the angular coverage of present and future forward neutrino experiments at the LHC, bracket the most interesting $y$ regions for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux. At $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV foreseen for the HL-LHC phase, nucleon collisions in air contribute to the prompt neutrino flux prominently below $E_{\nu }\sim 10^7$~GeV. Measurements of forward charm and/or forward neutrinos produced in hadron collisions up to $\sqrt{s}=100$ TeV, which might become possible at the FCC, are relevant for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux up to $E_{\nu }=10^8$ GeV and beyond.

29 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (20)

• Matching NLO QCD computations with Parton Shower simulations: the POWHEG method
• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• The Path to Proton Structure at One-Percent Accuracy
• Prompt neutrino fluxes from atmospheric charm
• Measurement of the multi-TeV neutrino cross section with IceCube using Earth absorption
• The Forward Physics Facility: Sites, Experiments, and Physics Potential
• The Muon Puzzle in cosmic-ray induced air showers and its connection to the Large Hadron Collider
• Perturbative charm production and the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux in light of RHIC and LHC
• Prompt atmospheric neutrino fluxes: perturbative QCD models and nuclear effects
• Forward Neutrino Fluxes at the LHC
• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays: The Intersection of the Cosmic and Energy Frontiers
• Far-forward neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider
• The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery
• Far-forward production of charm mesons and neutrinos at Forward Physics Facilities at the LHC and the intrinsic charm in the proton
• An investigation of the ${\alpha }_S$ and heavy quark mass dependence in the MSHT20 global PDF analysis
• Parton distribution function uncertainties in theoretical predictions for far-forward tau neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider
• Detector Requirements for Model-Independent Measurements of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Cross Sections
• Mapping the dominant regions of the phase space associated with $c\bar{c}$ production relevant for the Prompt Atmospheric Neutrino Flux
• Data-driven hadronic interaction model for atmospheric lepton flux calculations
• On the prompt contribution to the atmospheric neutrino flux

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Forward Neutrinos from Charm at Large Hadron Collider
• Science and Project Planning for the Forward Physics Facility in Preparation for the 2024-2026 European Particle Physics Strategy Update
• Discovering neutrino tridents at the Large Hadron Collider
• Neutrino Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider
• Detecting LHC Neutrinos at Surface Level
• Probing a $Z^{\prime }$ gauge boson via neutrino trident scattering in the Forward Physics Facility at the LHC and FCC
• Letter of Intent: The Forward Physics Facility