https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14444-y
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Prompt and conventional high-energy muon spectra from a full Monte Carlo simulation via CORSIKA7
1
Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44227, Dortmund, Germany
2
Oskar Klein Centre and Department of Physics, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
3
Ruhr Astroparticle and Plasma Physics Center (RAPP Center), Bochum, Germany
4
Theoretical Physics IV: Plasma Astroparticle Physics, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
5
Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Dortmund, Germany
6
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706, Madison, USA
7
Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296, Gothenburg, Sweden
a
ludwig.neste@fysik.su.se
b
pascal.gutjahr@tu-dortmund.de
Received:
18
February
2025
Accepted:
20
June
2025
Published online:
9
July
2025
Extensive air showers produce high-energy muons that can be utilized to probe hadronic interaction models in cosmic ray interactions. Most muons originate from pion and kaon decays, called conventional muons, while a smaller fraction, referred to as prompt muons, arises from the decay of heavier, short-lived hadrons. The EHISTORY option of the air shower simulation tool CORSIKA7 is used in this work to investigate the prompt and conventional muon flux in the energy range of 
–
, utilizing the newly developed open-source python software PANAMA. Identifying the muon parent particles allows for scaling the contribution of prompt particles, which can be leveraged by future experimental analyses to measure the normalization of the prompt muon flux. Obtained prompt muon spectra from CORSIKA7 are compared to MCEq results. The relevance to large-volume neutrino detectors, such as IceCube and KM3NeT, and the connection to hadronic interaction models is discussed.
© The Author(s) 2025
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