Uncertainties in Atmospheric Neutrino Fluxes

An evaluation of the principal uncertainties in the computation of neutrino fluxes produced in cosmic ray showers in the atmosphere is presented. The neutrino flux predictions are needed for comparison with experiment to perform neutrino oscillation studies. The paper concentrates on the main limitations which are due to hadron production uncertainties. It also treats primary cosmic ray flux uncertainties, which are at a lower level. The absolute neutrino fluxes are found to have errors of around 15% in the neutrino energy region important for contained events underground. Large cancellations of these errors occur when ratios of fluxes are considered, in particular, the $\nu_\mu/\bar{\nu}_\mu$ ratio below $E_\nu=1$ GeV, the $(\nu_\mu+\bar{\nu}_\mu)/(\nu_e+\bar{\nu}_e)$ ratio below $E_\nu=10$ GeV and the up/down ratios above $E_\nu=1$ GeV are at the 1% level. A detailed breakdown of the origin of these errors and cancellations is presented.Comment: 14 pages, 22 postscript figures, written in Revte

Cryogenic MCP detector performance benchmarking at the CSR

Molecular fragmentation processes can be observed very precisely with the help of dedicated detection systems. The MPIK in Heidelberg operates such a detector with the 3D imaging detector at the cryogenic storage ring CSR. Mainly reaction products from dissociative recombination of molecular ions with electrons are measured and observed here. In order to obtain reliable measurement results, the setting of the detector must be carefully adapted to the respective environment and circumstances of the experiment. For this purpose, the detector was examined in this work for the optimal configuration in the intended operating mode. In addition to these investigations, a new operating mode of the detector is implemented and investigated for its optimal parameters. This mode is to be introduced in order to raise the previous maximum count rate of 2×103 s −1 without distorting the acquired data or fearing of possible damage to the detector. To achieve this, the detector is switched on and off periodically so that saturation effects are kept under control. Here two formulas were established, with which the settings for optimal measurement results in this mode can be achieved. At the same time, depending on the technical possibilities. The new operation mode at ∼ 105s −1 was successfully demonstrated

Calculated Electron Fluxes at Airplane Altitudes

A precision measurement of atmospheric electron fluxes has been performed on a Japanese commercial airliner (Enomoto, {\it et al.}, 1991). We have performed a monte carlo calculation of the cosmic ray secondary electron fluxes expected in this experiment. The monte carlo uses the hadronic portion of our neutrino flux cascade program combined with the electromagnetic cascade portion of the CERN library program GEANT. Our results give good agreement with the data, provided we boost the overall normalization of the primary cosmic ray flux by 12\% over the normalization used in the neutrino flux calculation.Comment: in REVTEX, 12 pages + 4 figures available upon reques

Probing Pseudo-Dirac Neutrino through Detection of Neutrino Induced Muons from GRB Neutrinos

The possibility to verify the pseudo-Dirac nature of neutrinos is investigated here via the detection of ultra high energy neutrinos from distant cosmological objects like GRBs. The very long baseline and the energy range from $\sim$ TeV to $\sim$ EeV for such neutrinos invokes the likelihood to probe very small pseude-Dirac splittings. The expected secondary muons from such neutrinos that can be detected by a kilometer scale detector such as ICECUBE is calculated. The pseudo-Dirac nature, if exists, will show a considerable departure from flavour oscillation scenario in the total yield of the secondary muons induced by such neutrinos.Comment: 11 pages, 3figure

Position and velocity space diffusion of test particles in stochastic electromagnetic fields

The two--dimensional diffusive dynamics of test particles in a random electromagnetic field is studied. The synthetic electromagnetic fluctuations are generated through randomly placed magnetised ``clouds'' oscillating with a frequency $\omega$. We investigate the mean square displacements of particles in both position and velocity spaces. As $\omega$ increases the particles undergo standard (Brownian--like) motion, anomalous diffusion and ballistic motion in position space. Although in general the diffusion properties in velocity space are not trivially related to those in position space, we find that energization is present only when particles display anomalous diffusion in position space. The anomalous character of the diffusion is only in the non--standard values of the scaling exponents while the process is Gaussian.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

A test of tau neutrino interactions with atmospheric neutrinos and K2K

The presence of a tau component in the flux of atmospheric neutrinos inside the Earth, due to flavor oscillations, makes these neutrinos a valuable probe of interactions of the tau neutrino with matter. We study -- analytically and numerically -- the effects of nonstandard interactions in the nu_e-nu_tau sector on atmospheric neutrino oscillations, and calculate the bounds on the exotic couplings that follow from combining the atmospheric neutrino and K2K data. We find very good agreement between numerical results and analytical predictions derived from the underlying oscillation physics. While improving on existing accelerator bounds, our bounds still allow couplings of the size comparable to the standard weak interaction. The inclusion of new interactions expands the allowed region of the vacuum oscillation parameters towards smaller mixing angles, 0.2 ~< sin^2 theta_{23} ~< 0.7, and slightly larger mass squared splitting, 1.5 * 10^{-3} eV^2 ~< |\Delta m^2_{23}| ~< 4.0 * 10^{-3} eV^2, compared to the standard case. The impact of the K2K data on all these results is significant; further important tests of the nu_e-nu_tau exotic couplings will come from neutrino beams experiments such as MINOS and long baseline projects.Comment: 8 figures, some typos corrected, minor editing in the reference

High-Energy Neutrino Astronomy

Kilometer-scale neutrino detectors such as IceCube are discovery instruments covering nuclear and particle physics, cosmology and astronomy. Examples of their multidisciplinary missions include the search for the particle nature of dark matter and for additional small dimensions of space. In the end, their conceptual design is very much anchored to the observational fact that Nature accelerates protons and photons to energies in excess of $10^{20}$ and $10^{13}$ eV, respectively. The cosmic ray connection sets the scale of cosmic neutrino fluxes. In this context, we discuss the first results of the completed AMANDA detector and the reach of its extension, IceCube. Similar experiments are under construction in the Mediterranean. Neutrino astronomy is also expanding in new directions with efforts to detect air showers, acoustic and radio signals initiated by super-EeV neutrinos.Comment: 9 pages, Latex2e, uses ws-procs975x65standard.sty (included), 4 postscript figures. To appear in Proceedings of Thinking, Observing, and Mining the Universe, Sorrento, Italy, September 200

Constraints on the origin of the ultra-high energy cosmic-rays using cosmic diffuse neutrino flux limits: An analytical approach

Astrophysical neutrinos are expected to be produced in the interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays with surrounding photons. The fluxes of the astrophysical neutrinos are highly dependent on the characteristics of the cosmic-ray sources, such as their cosmological distributions. We study possible constraints on the properties of cosmic-ray sources in a model-independent way using experimentally obtained diffuse neutrino flux above 100 PeV. The semi-analytic formula is derived to estimate the cosmogenic neutrino fluxes as functions of source evolution parameter and source extension in redshift. The obtained formula converts the upper-limits on the neutrino fluxes into the constraints on the cosmic-ray sources. It is found that the recently obtained upper-limit on the cosmogenic neutrinos by IceCube constrains the scenarios with strongly evolving ultra-high energy cosmic-ray sources, and the future limits from an 1 km^3 scale detector are able to further constrain the ultra-high energy cosmic-rays sources with evolutions comparable to the cosmic star formation rate.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures and 1 table. Accepted by Phys. Rev.

Flux of Atmospheric Neutrinos

Atmospheric neutrinos produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere are of interest for several reasons. As a beam for studies of neutrino oscillations they cover a range of parameter space hitherto unexplored by accelerator neutrino beams. The atmospheric neutrinos also constitute an important background and calibration beam for neutrino astronomy and for the search for proton decay and other rare processes. Here we review the literature on calculations of atmospheric neutrinos over the full range of energy, but with particular attention to the aspects important for neutrino oscillations. Our goal is to assess how well the properties of atmospheric neutrinos are known at present.Comment: 68 pages, 26 figures. With permission from the Annual Review of Nuclear & Particle Science. Final version of this material is scheduled to appear in the Annual Review of Nuclear & Particle Science Vol. 52, to be published in December 2002 by Annual Reviews (http://annualreviews.org

Enhanced signal of astrophysical tau neutrinos propagating through Earth

Earth absorbs \nue and \numu of energies above about 100 TeV. As is well-known, although \nutau will also disappear through charged-current interactions, the \nutau flux will be regenerated by prompt tau decays. We show that this process also produces relatively large fluxes of secondary \nube and \nubmu, greatly enhancing the detectability of the initial \nutau. This is particularly important because at these energies \nutau is a significant fraction of the expected astrophysical neutrino flux, and only a tiny portion of the atmospheric neutrino flux.Comment: Four pages, two inline figure