On the Charm Contribution to the Atmospheric Neutrino Flux

Understand

We revisit the estimate of the charm particle contribution to the atmospheric neutrino flux that is expected to dominate at high energies because long-lived high-energy pions and kaons interact in the atmosphere before decaying into neutrinos.

• We focus on the production of forward charm particles which carry a large fraction of the momentum of the incident proton.
• In the case of strange particles, such a component is familiar from the abundant production of $K^{+} \Lambda$ pairs.
• These forward charm particles can dominate the high-energy atmospheric neutrino flux in underground experiments.