Depletion of atmospheric neutrino fluxes from parton energy loss

Abstract

The phenomenon of fully coherent energy loss (FCEL) in the collisions of protons on light ions affects the physics of cosmic ray air showers. As an illustration, we address two closely related observables: hadron production in forthcoming proton-oxygen collisions at the LHC, and the atmospheric neutrino fluxes induced by the semileptonic decays of hadrons produced in proton-air collisions. In both cases, a significant nuclear suppression due to FCEL is predicted. The conventional and prompt neutrino fluxes are suppressed by $\sim 10...25\%$ in their relevant neutrino energy ranges. Previous estimates of atmospheric neutrino fluxes should be scaled down accordingly to account for FCEL.

Comments: 5 pages, 4 figures