SMuK 2023 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 120: Cosmic Ray V

T 120.3: Talk

Thursday, March 23, 2023, 16:20–16:35, POT/0013

Searching for the Prompt Component of the Atmospheric Muon Flux — Pascal Gutjahr, Jean-Marco Alameddine, Mirco Hünnefeld, and •Ludwig Neste for the IceCube collaboration — Astroparticle Physics WG Rhode, TU Dortmund University, Germany

The muon is connected to many challenges in current physics, such as the muon puzzle in cosmic-ray induced air showers. The prompt component of the atmospheric muon flux has not been measured with high significance, yet. Understanding and measuring the prompt muon flux could help to better understand these challenges and help to test hadronic interaction models.

Atmospheric muons stem from the decay of particles created in hadronic interactions and their flux can be divided into a conventional and a prompt component. In the conventional part, muons originate from the decay of long-lived particles, mainly pions and kaons. In the prompt part, muons are produced by the decay of short-lived mesons. They consist of charmed mesons, strange mesons and unflavored ones.

In this talk, the current state of the analysis, which aims to confirm the existence of the prompt muon flux with the IceCube detector, is presented. Previous analyses suffered from statistical and systematic uncertainties in Monte Carlo simulations. Thus, we evaluate and create a new set of Monte Carlo simulations specialized to measure the prompt component.

Supported by BMBF (ErUM) and DFG (SFB 1491).