Seasonal variation of atmospheric leptons as a probe of charm

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Sep 17;105(12):121102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.121102. Epub 2010 Sep 13.

Abstract

The intensity of TeV atmospheric muons and neutrinos depends on the temperature in the stratosphere. We show that the energy dependence in the 100 TeV range of the correlation with temperature is sensitive to the fraction of muons and neutrinos from decay of charmed hadrons. We discuss the prospects for using the temperature effect as observed in gigaton neutrino detectors to measure the charm contribution.