Seasonal variation of atmospheric leptons as a probe of charm

TL;DR

This paper explores how the temperature dependence of atmospheric muons and neutrinos at TeV energies can be used to measure the contribution of charm hadron decays, providing a new probe for charm production in the atmosphere.

Contribution

It introduces a method to use atmospheric temperature correlations at TeV energies to estimate charm hadron decay contributions to atmospheric leptons.

Findings

Temperature correlation at 100 TeV is sensitive to charm decay fraction.

Potential to measure charm contribution using gigaton neutrino detectors.

Highlights the energy-dependent nature of atmospheric lepton production.

Abstract

The intensity of TeV atmospheric muons and neutrinos depends on the temperature in the stratosphere. We show that the energy-dependence in the 100 TeV range of the correlation with temperature is sensitive to the fraction of muons and neutrinos from decay of charmed hadrons. We discuss the prospects for using the temperature effect as observed in gigaton neutrino detectors to measure the charm contribution.