Hamburg 2016 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 82: Kosmische Strahlung IV
T 82.9: Talk
Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 18:50–19:05, VMP9 SR 29
Laterally separated muons from cosmic ray air showers in IceCube — •Dennis Soldin for the IceCube collaboration — Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Cosmic ray air showers with primary energies above ≳ 1 TeV can produce muons with high transverse momentum (pT ≳ 2 GeV). These isolated muons can have large transverse separations from the shower core, up to several hundred meters. Together with the muon bundle they form a double track signature in km3-scale neutrino telescopes such as IceCube. The separation from the core is a measure of the transverse momentum of the muon’s parent particle, and the muon lateral distribution depends on the composition of the incident nuclei. Hence, the composition of high energy cosmic rays can be determined from muon separation measurements. For pT ≳ 2 GeV particle interactions can be described in the context of perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD). Thus, measurements of these muons may contribute to test pQCD predictions of high energy interactions involving intermediate nuclei.
We present an analysis of laterally separated muons in IceCube using data taken from May 2012 to May 2013. Based on dedicated simulations we discuss the contributions from various hadrons produced in air showers to the high pT muon flux. Moreover, the lateral separation distribution, and a method to derive the transverse momentum distribution at generation, will be shown. The resulting distributions are used to study the cosmic ray mass composition in the PeV range.