Atmospheric and galactic tau neutrinos

Abstract

Neutrinos with energy greater than GeV are copiously produced in the p(A,p) interactions occurring in the earth atmosphere and in our galactic plane. A comparison of the tau and mu neutrino flux in the presence of neutrino oscillations from these two astrophysical sites is presented. It is pointed out that the galactic plane tau neutrino flux dominates over the downward going atmospheric tau neutrino flux at much lower energy value than that for the dominance of the mu neutrino flux from these two sites. Future prospects for possible observations of galactic tau neutrino flux are also briefly mentioned.