Observation of seasonal variations of the flux of high-energy atmospheric neutrinos with IceCube

Atmospheric muon neutrinos are produced by meson decays in cosmic-ray-induced air showers. The flux depends on meteorological quantities such as the air temperature, which affects the density of air. Competition between decay and re-interaction of those mesons in the first particle production generations gives rise to a higher neutrino flux when the air density in the stratosphere is lower, corresponding to a higher temperature. A measurement of a temperature dependence of the atmospheric ?mu, flux provides a novel method for constraining hadronic interaction models of air showers. It is particularly sensitive to the production of kaons. Studying this temperature dependence for the first time requires a large sample of high-energy neutrinos as well as a detailed understanding of atmospheric properties. We report the significant (> 10 s) observation of a correlation between the rate of more than 260,000 neutrinos, detected by IceCube between 2012 and 2018, and atmospheric tem-peratures of the stratosphere, measured by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's AQUA satellite. For the observed 10% seasonal change of effective atmospheric temperature we measure a 3.5(3)% change in the muon neutrino flux. This observed correlation deviates by about 2-3 standard deviations from the expected correla-tion of 4.3% as obtained from theoretical predictions under the assumption of various hadronic interaction models.

Automated summary

The study found a significant correlation between atmospheric muon neutrino flux and stratospheric atmospheric temperature, which deviates from theoretical predictions of hadronic interaction models. This discovery provides a new method for understanding the hadronic interaction models of air showers.