Study of High pT Muons in IceCube
Abstract
Muons with a high transverse momentum (p_T) are produced in cosmic ray air showers via semileptonic decay of heavy quarks and the decay of high p_T kaons and pions. These high p_T muons have a large lateral separation from the shower core muon bundle. IceCube is well suited for the detection of high p_T muons. The surface shower array can determine the energy, core location and direction of the cosmic ray air shower while the in-ice array can reconstruct the energy and direction of the high p_T muon. This makes it possible to measure the decoherence function (lateral separation spectrum) at distances greater than 150 meters. The muon p_T can be determined from the muon energy (measured by dE/dx) and the lateral separation. The high p_T muon spectrum may also be calculated in a perturbative QCD framework; this spectrum is sensitive to the cosmic-ray composition.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0909.0055,
title = {Study of High pT Muons in IceCube},
author = {Lisa Gerhardt and Spencer Klein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.0055},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Proceedings of the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 2009