Angular distribution of prompt neutrinos in Extensive Air Showers

Abstract

Atmospheric neutrinos are produced in interactions of Cosmic Rays with the Earth's atmosphere and are an important background to other sources of neutrinos, such as the cosmogenic neutrinos. The flux of very high energy leptons is directly associated to the heavy quark (charm and bottom) production in the Extensive Air Showers (EASs), with the prompt decay of charmed hadrons being expected to be the dominant source of leptons at PeV energies. In this contribution we estimate the prompt neutrino flux considering a modified version of the CORSIKA Monte Carlo, which includes the production of charmed particles in the first interaction of the primary cosmic ray. The heavy quark production is modelled considering two different models: the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) formalism and the Intrinsic Quark Model (IQM). The modified version of the code allows us to analyze the impact of the production and propagation of heavy hadrons in the EAS development. In particular, we will present our results for the angular and energy distributions of the prompt neutrinos in the EASs. We will present the CGC and IQM predictions considering different values for the zenithal angle of the primary particle. Energy cuts are applied (1 PeV) in order to analyze the most energetic neutrinos. We demonstrate that such neutrinos follow the direction of the primary particle. Such result is useful to estimate the number of high energy leptons that reach the ground.