Eur. Phys. J. C (2023) 83: 777
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11679-5

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

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

¹ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056, Aachen, Germany
² Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, 5005, Adelaide, Australia
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., 99508, Anchorage, AK, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19059, 502 Yates St., Science Hall Rm 108, 76019, Arlington, TX, USA
⁵ CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, 30314, Atlanta, GA, USA
⁶ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, 30332, Atlanta, GA, USA
⁷ Department of Physics, Southern University, 70813, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
⁸ Department of Physics, University of California, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA
⁹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA
¹⁰ Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489, Berlin, Germany
¹¹ Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
¹² Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹³ Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Dienst ELEM, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹⁴ Department of Physics and Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, Harvard University, 02138, Cambridge, MA, USA
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 02139, Cambridge, MA, USA
¹⁶ Department of Physics and The International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, Chiba University, 263-8522, Chiba, Japan
¹⁷ Department of Physics, Loyola University Chicago, 60660, Chicago, IL, USA
¹⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
¹⁹ Department of Physics, University of Maryland, 20742, College Park, MD, USA
²⁰ Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA
²¹ Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA
²² Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
²³ Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221, Dortmund, Germany
²⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, 48824, East Lansing, MI, USA
²⁵ Department of Physics, University of Alberta, T6G 2E1, Edmonton, AB, Canada
²⁶ Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
²⁷ Physik-department, Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
²⁸ Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, 1211, Genève, Switzerland
²⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, 9000, Gent, Belgium
³⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, 92697, Irvine, CA, USA
³¹ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Astroparticle Physics, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany
³² Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Experimental Particle Physics, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany
³³ Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, Queen’s University, K7L 3N6, Kingston, ON, Canada
³⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, 89154, Las Vegas, NV, USA
³⁵ Nevada Center for Astrophysics, University of Nevada, 89154, Las Vegas, NV, USA
³⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, 66045, Lawrence, KS, USA
³⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, 90095, Los Angeles, CA, USA
³⁸ Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology-CP3, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
³⁹ Department of Physics, Mercer University, 31207-0001, Macon, GA, USA
⁴⁰ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706, Madison, WI, USA
⁴¹ Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706, Madison, WI, USA
⁴² Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099, Mainz, Germany
⁴³ Department of Physics, Marquette University, 53201, Milwaukee, WI, USA
⁴⁴ Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 48149, Münster, Germany
⁴⁵ Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, 19716, Newark, DE, USA
⁴⁶ Department of Physics, Yale University, 06520, New Haven, CT, USA
⁴⁷ Columbia Astrophysics and Nevis Laboratories, Columbia University, 10027, New York, NY, USA
⁴⁸ Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, OX1 3PU, Oxford, UK
⁴⁹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia Galileo Galilei, Università Degli Studi di Padova, 35122, Padova, PD, Italy
⁵⁰ Department of Physics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA
⁵¹ Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, 57701, Rapid City, SD, USA
⁵² Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, 54022, River Falls, WI, USA
⁵³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, 14627, Rochester, NY, USA
⁵⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
⁵⁵ Oskar Klein Centre and Department of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
⁵⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, 11794-3800, Stony Brook, NY, USA
⁵⁷ Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, 16419, Suwon, Korea
⁵⁸ Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, 11529, Taipei, Taiwan
⁵⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, 35487, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
⁶⁰ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, 16802, University Park, PA, USA
⁶¹ Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, 16802, University Park, PA, USA
⁶² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120, Uppsala, Sweden
⁶³ Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
⁶⁴ Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Platanenallee 6, 15738, Zeuthen, Germany
⁶⁵ Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School Post, 751005, Bhubaneswar, India
⁶⁶ Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96, Gothenburg, Sweden
⁶⁷ Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 113-0032, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
⁶⁸

^tf analysis@icecube.wisc.edu

Received: 8 March 2023
Accepted: 4 June 2023
Published online: 4 September 2023

Abstract

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 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 () observation of a correlation between the rate of more than 260,000 neutrinos, detected by IceCube between 2012 and 2018, and atmospheric temperatures 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 correlation of 4.3 as obtained from theoretical predictions under the assumption of various hadronic interaction models.