Study of High pT Muons in IceCube
Abstract
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 cosmic ray air shower while the in-ice array can reconstruct the energy and direction of the high pT muon. This makes it possible to measure the decoherence function (lateral separation spectrum) at distances greater than 150 meters. The muon pT can be determined from the muon energy (measured by dE/dx) and the lateral separation. The high pT muon spectrum may also be calculated in a perturbative QCD framework; this spectrum is sensitive to the cosmic-ray composition.