https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201613005015
Constraints on atmospheric charmed-meson production from IceCube
1 University of California, Berkeley, USA
2 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, USA
* e-mail: tpalczewski@lbl.gov
** http://icecube.wisc.edu
Published online: 29 November 2016
At very-high energies (100 TeV - 1 PeV), the small value of Bjorken-x (≤ 10−3 − 10−7) at which the parton distribution functions are evaluated makes the calculation of charm quark production very difficult. The charm quark has mass (~1.5±0.2 GeV) significantly above the ΛQCD scale (~200 MeV), and therefore its production is perturbatively calculable. However, the uncertainty in the data and the calculations cannot exclude some smaller non-perturbative contribution. To evaluate the prompt neutrino flux, one needs to know the charm production cross-section in pN -> cc̄ X, and hadronization of charm particles. This contribution briefly discusses computation of prompt neutrino flux and presents the strongest limit on prompt neutrino flux from IceCube.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2016
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