The prompt atmospheric neutrino flux in the light of LHCb

Gauld, Rhorry; Rojo, Juan; Rottoli, Luca; Sarkar, Subir; Talbert, Jim

Abstract

The recent observation of very high energy cosmic neutrinos by IceCube heralds the beginning of neutrino astronomy. At these energies, the dominant background to the astrophysical signal is the flux of ‘prompt’ neutrinos, arising from the decay of charmed mesons produced by cosmic ray collisions in the atmosphere. In this work we provide predictions for the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux in the framework of perturbative QCD, using state-of-the-art Monte Carlo event generators. Our calculation includes the constraints set by charm production measurements from the LHCb experiment at 7 TeV, recently validated with the corresponding 13TeV data. Our result for the prompt flux is a factor of about 2 below the previous benchmark calculation, in general agreement with other recent estimates, but with an improved estimate of the uncertainty. This alleviates the existing tension between the theoretical prediction and IceCube limits, and suggests that a direct detection of the prompt flux is imminent.

Citation

Gauld, R., Rojo, J., Rottoli, L., Sarkar, S., & Talbert, J. (2016). The prompt atmospheric neutrino flux in the light of LHCb. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016(2), Article 130. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep02%282016%29130

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 2, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Feb 19, 2016
• Publication Date: Feb 28, 2016
• Deposit Date: Apr 1, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 2, 2019
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Electronic ISSN: 1029-8479
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2016
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 130
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep02%282016%29130
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1305094