High-energy spectrum and zenith-angle distribution of atmospheric neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper calculates the energy spectrum and zenith-angle distribution of atmospheric neutrinos from 10 GeV to 10 PeV using various hadronic models, highlighting uncertainties in high-energy meson production affecting neutrino flux predictions.

Contribution

It provides detailed calculations of atmospheric neutrino fluxes with different hadronic models and primary spectra, including an analytic description, addressing uncertainties in meson production cross sections.

Findings

Prompt neutrino contribution is less significant above 100 TeV due to production uncertainties.

Comparison with IceCube data suggests current models' limitations in high-energy neutrino flux predictions.

Analytic formulas for neutrino fluxes are provided for future use.

Abstract

High-energy neutrinos, arising from decays of mesons produced through the collisions of cosmic ray particles with air nuclei, form the background in the astrophysical neutrino detection problem. An ambiguity in high-energy behavior of pion and especially kaon production cross sections for nucleon-nucleus collisions may affect essentially the calculated neutrino flux. We present results of the calculation of the energy spectrum and zenith-angle distribution of the muon and electron atmospheric neutrinos in the energy range 10 GeV to 10 PeV. The calculation was performed with usage of known hadronic models (QGSJET-II-03, SIBYLL 2.1, Kimel & Mokhov) for two of the primary spectrum parametrizations, by Gaisser & Honda and by Zatsepin & Sokolskaya. The comparison of the calculated muon neutrino spectrum with the IceCube40 experiment data make it clear that even at energies above 100 TeV the prompt neutrino contribution is not so apparent because of tangled uncertainties of the strange (kaons) and charm (D-mesons) particle production cross sections. An analytic description of calculated neutrino fluxes is presented.