Measurements of integral muon intensity at large zenith angles

TL;DR

This paper presents precise measurements of near-horizontal muon intensity at large zenith angles, covering energies from 1.7 to 7.2 GeV, based on over 20 million muons, providing new data for this angular and energy range.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurements of muon intensity at large zenith angles across multiple energies, with a simple analytical fit for the dependence.

Findings

First measurements of muon intensity at zenith angles 60-90° for energies 1.7-7.2 GeV.

Data well fitted by a simple analytical formula.

Over 20 million muons analyzed for high statistical accuracy.

Abstract

High-statistics data on near-horizontal muons collected with Russian-Italian coordinate detector DECOR are analyzed. Precise measurements of muon angular distributions in zenith angle interval from 60 to 90 degrees have been performed. In total, more than 20 million muons are selected. Dependences of the absolute integral muon intensity on zenith angle for several threshold energies ranging from 1.7 GeV to 7.2 GeV are derived. Results for this region of zenith angles and threshold energies have been obtained for the first time. The dependence of integral intensity on zenith angle and threshold energy is well fitted by a simple analytical formula.