Neutrinos from cosmic ray interactions in the Sun

Understand

Cosmic rays hitting the solar atmosphere generate neutrinos that interact and oscillate in the Sun and oscillate on the way to Earth.

• These neutrinos could potentially be detected with neutrino telescopes and will be a background for searches for neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in the Sun.
• We calculate the flux of neutrinos from these cosmic ray interactions in the Sun and also investigate the interactions near a detector on Earth that give rise to muons.
• We compare this background with both regular Earth-atmospheric neutrinos and signals from dark matter annihilation in the Sun.