The high-energy galactic tau neutrino flux and its atmospheric background

Abstract

We compare the tau neutrino flux arising from the galaxy and the earth atmosphere for $10^3\le E/GeV\le 10^{11}$. The intrinsic and oscillated tau neutrino fluxes from both sources are considered. We find that, for $E\ge 10^3$ GeV, the oscillated ${\nu }_{\tau }$ flux along the galactic plane dominates over the maximal intrinsic atmospheric ${\nu }_{\tau }$ flux, i.e., the flux along the horizontal direction. We also briefly comment on the prospects for observing these high-energy tau neutrinos.

Comments: 3 pages, 2 figures, talk presented in EPS03, Aachen, Germany