Abstract
In this work we investigate the impact of intrinsic charm on the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux. The color dipole approach to heavy quark production is generalized to include the contribution of processes initiated by charm quarks. The prompt neutrino flux is calculated assuming the presence of intrinsic charm in the wave function of the projetile hadron. The predictions are compared with previous color dipole results which were obtained taking into account only the process initiated by gluons. In addition, we estimate the atmospheric (conventional + prompt) neutrino flux and compare our predictions with the ICECUBE results for the astrophysical neutrino flux. Our results demonstrate that the contribution of the charm quark initiated process is non - negligible and that the prompt neutrino flux can be enhanced by a factor $\approx$ 2 at large neutrino energies if an intrinsic charm component is present in the proton wave function.
Highlights
Astrophysical neutrinos detected by the IceCube Observatory mark the beginning of neutrino astronomy [1,2,3], which allows us to study very high energy physical processes in the Universe [4,5]
On the other hand, when the charm channel is included, we predict an enhancement of ≈160% in the flux. These results strongly suggest that a generalized treatment of heavy quark production, taking into account charm initiated processes, is crucial to obtain realistic predictions of the prompt flux using the color dipole approach, especially if an intrinsic charm component is present in the proton wave function
The heavy quark component of the proton has a direct impact on the calculation of the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux, which is a background to the astrophysical neutrino flux measured by the ICECUBE Collaboration
Summary
Astrophysical neutrinos detected by the IceCube Observatory mark the beginning of neutrino astronomy [1,2,3], which allows us to study very high energy physical processes in the Universe [4,5]. Several neutrino observatories [6,7,8,9] have studied the high-energy neutrino flux. The experimental data indicate that, at low energies (Eν ≲ 105 GeV), the measured neutrino flux is dominated by atmospheric neutrinos which come from the decay of light mesons (pions and kaons). This flux is called conventional atmospheric neutrino flux [10,11,12]. The precise knowledge of this contribution is crucial for the determination of the cosmic neutrino flux
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