Tau energy loss and ultrahigh energy skimming tau neutrinos

Jeong, Yu Seon; Luu, Minh Vu; Reno, Mary Hall; Sarcevic, Ina

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.96.043003

Tau energy loss and ultrahigh energy skimming tau neutrinos

Journal Article · Mon Aug 07 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Physical Review D

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.043003· OSTI ID:1423946

Jeong, Yu Seon ^[1]; Luu, Minh Vu ^[2]; Reno, Mary Hall ^[2]; Sarcevic, Ina ^[3]

National Inst. of Supercomputing and Networking (KISTI), Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States). Dept. of Physics; Arizona State University
Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

For this paper, we consider propagation of high-energy earth-skimming taus produced in interactions of astrophysical tau neutrinos. For astrophysical tau neutrinos, we take generic power-law flux, E^-2 and the cosmogenic flux initiated by the protons. We calculate tau energy loss in several approaches, such as dipole models and the phenomenological approach in which parametrization of the F₂ is used. We evaluate the tau neutrino charged-current cross section using the same approaches for consistency. We find that uncertainty in the neutrino cross section and in the tau energy loss partially compensate giving very small theoretical uncertainty in the emerging tau flux for distances ranging from 2 to 100 km and for the energy range between 10⁶ and 10¹¹ GeV , focusing on energies above 10⁸ GeV . When we consider uncertainties in the neutrino cross section, inelasticity in neutrino interactions and the tau energy loss, which are not correlated, i.e. they are not all calculated in the same approach, theoretical uncertainty ranges from about 30% and 60% at 10⁸ GeV to about factors of 3.3 and 3.8 at 10¹¹ GeV for the E^-2 flux and the cosmogenic flux, respectively, for the distance of 10 km rock. The spread in predictions significantly increases for much larger distances, e.g., ~ 1,000 km . Most of the uncertainty comes from the treatment of photonuclear interactions of the tau in transit through large distances. We also consider Monte Carlo calculation of the tau propagation and we find that the result for the emerging tau flux is in agreement with the result obtained using analytic approach. Our results are relevant to several experiments that are looking for skimming astrophysical taus, such as the Pierre Auger Observatory, HAWC and Ashra. We evaluate the aperture for the Auger and discuss briefly application to the other two experiments.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0009913; SC0010113

OSTI ID:: 1423946

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1374214

Journal Information:: Physical Review D, Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 96; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 2470-0010

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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