Uncertainties in atmospheric neutrino fluxes

Abstract

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 νµ/νµ ratio below Eν = 1 GeV, the (νµ + νµ)/(νe + νe) ratio below Eν = 10 GeV and the up/down ratios above Eν = 1 GeV are at the 1% level. A detailed breakdown of the origin of these errors and cancellations is presented.

Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data

“…IV, we estimate the uncertainties in our calculations. As the uncertainties of the predicted atmospheric neutrino flux is crucial for the study of neutrino oscillations, the study of them is important [11]. Since our calculation reproduces the observed atmospheric muon flux data, the uncertainty due to that in the π production could be estimated from the experimental error and the residual of the reconstruction of atmospheric muon data.…”

Search for relativistic magnetic monopoles with five years of the ANTARES detector data

“…Up-going atmospheric neutrinos from the decay of pions and kaons are simulated using the package GENHEN [28,29] assuming the model from the Bartol group [30,31] which does not include the decay of charmed particles. The analysis presented in this paper is based on a run-by-run Monte Carlo simulation [32], which takes into consideration the real data taking conditions of the detector (e.g.…”

Charge-separated atmospheric neutrino-induced muons in the MINOS far detector

“…Uncertainties in the primary cosmic ray fluxes and the hadronic production are the main contributors to the overall uncertainty in the normalization. Combining these sources gives an uncertainty in the flux normalization of 15% [35]. There are three sources of systematic uncertainty in the ratio of the number of muons induced by low energy neutrinos to those induced by high energy neutrinos.…”

“…These arise from uncertainties in the ratios of the ν µ cross section, σ νµ , to the ν µ cross section, σ νµ , and we estimate the uncertainties to be 9% [36] for energies < 30 GeV (9) and 2% [40] for energies > 30 GeV (10). The uncertainty in the ratio of the number of ν µ to ν µ (11) is 1% [35].…”