Dresden 2013 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 90: Neutrinoastronomie 5
T 90.6: Talk
Thursday, March 7, 2013, 18:00–18:15, HSZ-E03
Simulation of atmospheric neutrino and muon fluxes — •Sebastian Schöneberg1, Anatoli Fedynitch2, and Julia Becker Tjus1 — 1Ruhr-Universität Bochum — 2CERN/KIT
Atmospheric neutrinos created by the interaction of cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere constitute the main background for neutrino observatories such as ANTARES or IceCube. Accurately predicting the background of atmospheric neutrinos is crucial in improving the ability to detect neutrinos from extraterrestrial sources.
Presently, Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere provide the best estimate of the flux of atmospheric neutrinos and muons. To ensure an accurate treatment of the underlying physics, it is not sufficient to consider the simulated neutrino fluxes in total. Whenever possible, the details of the individual contributions to the flux have to be compared to observable physical quantities. For example, while the ratio between the fluxes of atmospheric neutrinos and anti-neutrinos is difficult to measure, the charge ratio of the atmospheric muon flux can be observed.
In this talk we present the status of our MC simulation of atmospheric neutrino and muon fluxes. We demonstrate that reweighting the simulated muon fluxes can be used to make the simulated muon charge ratio agree with the observation. This reweighting scheme can be applied to alter the simulated neutrino flux in accordance with the muon flux, thereby improving the estimate of the atmospheric neutrino background.