Effect of muon-nuclear inelastic scattering on high-energy atmospheric muon spectrum at large depth underwater

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different models of muon-nuclear inelastic scattering affect the predicted high-energy muon spectra underwater at large depths, revealing significant spectral distortions above 100 TeV.

Contribution

It compares two models of muon-nuclear inelastic scattering, highlighting the impact of nuclear effects on high-energy underwater muon spectra.

Findings

Deep underwater muon spectra are significantly distorted above 100 TeV with the 2C model.

Nuclear effects like shadowing and Fermi motion influence muon energy loss.

The 2C model predicts different spectra compared to the GVMD model at high energies.

Abstract

The energy spectra of hadron cascade showers produced by the cosmic ray muons travelling through water as well as the muon energy spectra underwater at the depth up to 4 km are calculated with two models of muon inelastic scattering on nuclei, the recent hybrid model (two-component, 2C) and the well-known generalized ector-meson-dominance model for the comparison. The 2C model involves photonuclear interactions at low and moderate virtualities as well as the hard scattering including the weak neutral current processes. For the muon scattering off nuclei substantial uclear effects, shadowing, nuclear binding and Fermi motion of nucleons are taken into account. It is shown that deep nderwater muon energy spectrum calculated with the 2C model are noticeably distorted at energies above 100 TeV as compared to that obtained with the GVMD model.