Würzburg 2018 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 68: Neutrinophysik III
T 68.6: Talk
Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 17:45–18:00, Z6 - SR 2.012
Modulation of the cosmic muon flux measured at Borexino — •Dominik Jeschke for the Borexino collaboration — Technische Universität München
The Borexino Experiment is situated at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso and aims for the measurement of low energetic solar neutrinos. Even though the flux of cosmic muon is reduced by a factor 106 due to the 3800 mwe. of rock overburden at the experimental side, a residual cosmic muon flux of (3.432 ± 0.001) · 10−4m−2s−1 with a mean energy of 270 GeV is still present. These muons are detected by a highly efficient muon veto at Borexino.
Most of the cosmic muons reaching the detector are produced in the decay of pions that originate from collisions of the primary cosmic radiation with atoms of the atmosphere. Since only pions and kaons that decay in flight without undergoing any interactions before produce muons with sufficient energy to reach the detector, a seasonal modulation of the cosmic muon flux is expected due to density changes in the atmosphere that alter the mean free path of the parent mesons.
In this talk, an analysis of the cosmic muon flux based on almost 10 years of data from the Borexino experiment is presented. Besides the seasonal modulation, other periods are searched for and their significance is checked with the help of a Lomb-Scargle periodogram.
This work is funded by the DFG (GZ:OB 168/2-1).