Speaker
Description
In this work, we present a new evaluation of the prompt atmospheric lepton flux, which includes an intrinsic charm component in cosmic ray–air interactions. The intrinsic charm enhances the forward production of $\bar{D}^0$, $D^-$, and $\Lambda_c$, and subsequently the atmospheric lepton fluxes. An intrinsic charm-induced enhancement of the prompt muon flux leads to a corresponding enhancement of the prompt muon neutrino flux. We compare the fluxes of muon and muon-neutrinos with IceCube high-energy atmospheric muon flux measurements and IceCube upper bounds on the prompt muon neutrino flux, respectively, and discuss the challenges of achieving predictions that are simultaneously consistent. We investigate how scaling of the unflavored light meson contributions to the prompt atmospheric muon flux might account for both the measured atmospheric muon flux and the upper bound on the atmospheric muon neutrino flux. Based on our analysis, we emphasize the role of cosmic ray spectrum and composition, and the need for refinements of hadronic interaction models and high-statistics future measurements of atmospheric fluxes by neutrino telescopes.