Calculation of the atmospheric muon flux motivated by the ATIC-2 experiment

TL;DR

This paper calculates the atmospheric muon flux at ground level using primary cosmic ray data from ATIC-2 and extends the analysis to high energies up to 100 TeV, showing good agreement with experimental measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation method incorporating recent cosmic ray data and models, extending muon flux predictions to higher energies with improved accuracy.

Findings

Calculated muon spectrum agrees well with multiple experimental data sets.

Extended muon flux calculations up to 100 TeV energy range.

Incorporates contributions from different astrophysical sources in the cosmic ray model.

Abstract

We calculate the cosmic ray muon flux at ground level using directly the primary cosmic ray spectrum and composition measured in the ATIC-2 balloon experiment. In order to extend the calculations to high energies, up to 100 TeV, we use the data of the GAMMA experiment as well as Zatsepin and Sokolskaya model. This model, supported by the ATIC-2 data, comprises contributions to the cosmic ray flux of three classes of astrophysical sources - the shocks from exploding stars, nova and supernova of different types. The muon flux computation is based on the method for solution of atmospheric hadron cascade equations in which rising total inelastic cross-sections of hadron-nuclear interactions as well as non-power-law character of the primary cosmic ray spectrum are taken into account. The calculated muon spectrum agrees well with measurements of L3+Cosmic and BESS-TeV, CAPRICE, Frejus, MACRO, LVD as well as other experiments.