Atmospheric muon and neutrino fluxes and their relation to the Cosmic Ray mass composition at the knee

Abstract

The observation of astrophysical neutrinos by current high energy neutrino observatories, such as IceCube or ANTARES requires detailed understanding of the atmospheric neutrino background. This inevitable background is produced by extensive air showers and, as a consequence, its calculation requires detailed modeling of Cosmic-Ray energy spectra from TeV to EeV energies and beyond. The knee is the most prominent feature in this energy range. To simulate the absolute atmospheric neutrino and muon flux spectrum and to study their sensitivity to the mass composition in the knee energy range, we have parametrized the primary CR energy spectra of the H, He, C, Si, and Fe components based on direct experiments and on KASCADE unfolding results. The simulations were performed with CORSIKA employing different hadronic interaction models. We present the results, compare the simulated spectra with the ones measured by current neutrino telescopes, and discuss the potential of observing the knee in atmospheric muon and neutrino spectra and of inferring information about the mass composition of cosmic rays in the knee energy range.