Studying High pT Muons in Cosmic-Ray Air Showers
نویسنده
چکیده
Most cosmic-ray air shower arrays have focused on detecting electromagnetic shower particles and low energy muons. A few groups (most notably MACRO + EASTOP and SPASE + AMANDA) have studied the high energy muon component of showers. However, these experiments had small solid angles, and did not study muons far from the core. The IceTop + IceCube combination, with its 1 km muon detection area can study muons far from the shower core. IceCube can measure their energy loss (dE/dx), and hence their energy. With the energy, and the known distribution of production heights, the transverse momentum (pT ) spectrum of high pT muons can be determined. The production of these muons is calculable in perturbative QCD, so the measured muon spectra can be used to probe the composition of incident cosmic-rays.
منابع مشابه
Muons in IceCube
Muons with a high transverse momentum (pT ) are produced in cosmic ray air showers via semileptonic decay of heavy quarks and the decay of high pT kaons and pions. These high pT muons have a large lateral separation from the shower core muon bundle. IceCube is well suited for the detection of high pT muons. The surface shower array can determine the energy, core location and direction of the co...
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