Seasonal Variations of the Atmospheric Muon Neutrino Spectrum measured with IceCube

Karolin Hymon^1*

¹Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

* Presenter:Karolin Hymon, email:khymon@gate.sinica.edu.tw

Atmospheric muon neutrinos, produced by cosmic ray interactions in the Earth's atmosphere, exhibit seasonal variations driven by temperature-dependent meson decay and hadronic interactions. This study presents an energy-dependent analysis of these variations, using 11.3 years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The analysis covers neutrinos in the energy range from 125 GeV to 10 TeV and zenith angles between 90° and 110°, corresponding to the atmosphere above Antarctica. Results show an increasing amplitude of seasonal variation with energy during austral summer and a decreasing amplitude during austral winter. This talk will discuss the seasonal differences in atmospheric neutrino production and compare the observed variations with theoretical predictions from the MCEq code, using the NRLMSISE-00 atmospheric model.

Keywords: atmospheric neutrinos, seasonal variations, cosmic ray air showers, IceCube, NRLMSISE-00 atmospheric model