Atmospheric muons and neutrinos from charm

Abstract

We have updated our previous investigation of the production of muons and neutrinos in cosmic ray interactions with the atmosphere, taking account of recent results from the $ep$ collider HERA in our QCD-based model for hadronic interactions. Qualitatively, our previous results remain unmodified: our predictions for the conventional muon and neutrino fluxes agree with earlier calculations, whereas the charm particle treatment we use gives significantly lower prompt fluxes compared to earlier estimates. This implies better prospects for detecting very high energy neutrinos from cosmic sources.