High-energy atmospheric muon flux calculations in comparison with recent measurements

Abstract

Recently the atmospheric muon spectra at high energies were reconstructed for two ranges of zenith angles, basing on the events collected with the IceCube detector. These measurements reach high energies at which the contribution to atmospheric muon fluxes from decays of short-lived hadrons is expected. Latest IceCube measurements of the high-energy atmospheric muon spectrum indicate the presence of prompt muon component at energies above 500 TeV. In this work, the atmospheric conventional muon flux in the energy range 10 GeV - 10 PeV is calculated using a set of hadronic models in combination with known parameterizations of the cosmic ray spectrum by Zatsepin $\&$ Sokolskaya and by Hillas $\&$ Gaisser. The calculation of the prompt muons with use of the quark-gluon string model (QGSM) reproduces the muon data of the IceCube experiment. Nevertheless, an additional contribution to the prompt muon component is required to describe the IceCube muon spectra in case if a charm production model predicts the appreciably lower prompt lepton flux as compared with QGSM. This addition, apparently originating from rare decay modes of the short-lived unflavored mesons $\eta, \eta^\prime, \rho, \omega, \phi$, might ensure the competing contribution to the high-energy atmospheric muon flux.