Seasonal Variation of Atmospheric Muons

Abstract

Competition between decay and re-interaction of charged pions and kaons depends on the temperature/density profile of the upper atmosphere. The amplitude and phase of the variations depend on the minimum muon energy required to reach the detector and on muon multiplicity in the detector. Here we compare different methods for characterizing the muon production profile and the corresponding effective temperature. A muon production profile based on a parameterization of simulations of muons as a function of primary energy is compared with approximate analytic solutions of the cascade equation integrated over primary energy. In both cases, we compare two definitions of effective temperature. We emphasize applications to compact underground detectors like MINOS and OPERA, while indicating how they relate to extended detectors like IceCube.