Impact of high-energy hadron interactions on the atmospheric neutrino flux predictions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different high-energy hadronic interaction models affect predictions of the atmospheric neutrino flux, revealing significant discrepancies up to a factor of 1.8 at 1 TeV.

Contribution

It compares various hadronic models' impact on neutrino flux predictions using primary cosmic ray spectra and experimental data.

Findings

Discrepancies up to 1.8 in neutrino flux predictions at 1 TeV between models

Comparison with experimental data shows notable differences in flux estimates

Highlights the importance of hadronic interaction models in neutrino flux calculations

Abstract

We study the influence of hadron interaction features on the high-energy atmospheric neutrino spectrum. The 1D calculation is performed with use of the known high-energy hadronic models, SIBYLL 2.1, QGSJET-II, Kimel and Mokhov, for the parameterizations of primary cosmic ray spectra issued from the measurement data. The results are compared with the Frejus data and AMANDA-II measurements as well as with other calculations. Sizable difference of the neutrino fluxes (up to the factor of 1.8 at 1 TeV) that are obtained with the SIBYLL and QGSJET-II appears to be rather unexpected keeping in mind the hadron and muon flux calculations in the same energy region.