Seasonal variations of the atmospheric muon neutrino spectrum measured with IceCube
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10052_2025_Article_14844.pdf
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1.45 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4931ebf57d274f5229293801cd4abbc5
Author(s)
IceCube Collaboration
Date Issued
December 1, 2025
Journal
The European Physical Journal C
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Citation
IceCube Collaboration. Seasonal variations of the atmospheric muon neutrino spectrum measured with IceCube. Eur. Phys. J. C 85, 1368 (2025).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This study presents an analysis of seasonal variations in the atmospheric muon neutrino flux, using 11.3 years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. By leveraging a novel spectral unfolding method, we explore the energy range from 125 GeV to 10 TeV for zenith angles from 90 ∘ to 110 ∘ , corresponding to the Antarctic atmosphere. Our findings reveal that the differential measurement of the amplitudes of the seasonal variation is consistent with an energy-dependent decrease reaching ( - 4.5 ± 1.2)% during Austral winter and increase to (+ 3.9 ± 1.3)% during Austral summer relative to the annual average at 10 TeV. While the unfolded flux exceeds the model predictions by up to 30%, the differential measurement of the seasonal to annual average flux remains unaffected. The measured seasonal variations of the muon neutrino spectrum are consistent with theoretical predictions using the MCEq code and the NRLMSISE-00 atmospheric model.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14844-0
