Hadronic Interactions Modeling, and the calculation of the inclusive fluxes of atmospheric muons and neutrinos

Abstract

This work discusses the importance of the modeling of hadronic interactions for the prediction of the atmospheric muon and neutrino fluxes. The calculation requires a precise knowledge of the primary cosmic ray fluxes and of the single particle inclusive energy spectra in hadronic interactions. The present calculations, after taking into account the effects of neutrino oscillations, can describe quite successfully the existing data. The uncertainty in the extrapolation of the prediction to very high energy is dominated by our poor knowledge of the primary cosmic ray spectra, the size of Feynman–scaling violations, and our poor understanding of the properties of charmed particles production. The measurement of the atmospheric muon and neutrino fluxes at very high energy with the future neutrino telescopes could provide an important constraint on the combination of the cosmic ray fluxes and the description of hadronic interactions at high energy.