High energy neutrinos from the atmosphere and from astrophysical sources

Rikard Enberg
Uppsala / LBNL


Abstract:

High energy cosmic rays that hit Earth, and astrophysical sources where protons are shock-accelerated to high energies are both examples of cosmic beam dump experiments. In the atmosphere the cosmic rays collide with the nuclei of the atmosphere and in astrophysical sources the protons collide with material present in the jet and the source. These high-energy collisions produce neutrinos through decays of the produced mesons and baryons. I will give a brief introduction, and then discuss our recent results for neutrino fluxes arising from charm quark production both in the atmosphere and in astrophysical sources. Because of their larger masses and shorter lifetimes, charmed mesons are subject to much less hadronic and radiative cooling than pions and kaons, and even though the production cross section is smaller, neutrinos from charm dominate at higher energies.