Secondary Neutrinos from Tau Neutrino Interactions in Earth

Abstract

The energy dependence of "secondary" neutrinos from the process nutau->tau->numubar->mubar for two input tau neutrino fluxes (F^0_nu ~ 1/E_nu and 1/E_nu^2), assumed to have been produced via neutrino oscillations from extragalactic sources, is evaluated to assess the impact of secondary neutrinos on the upward muon rates in a km^3 detector. We show that the secondard fluxes are considerably suppressed for the steeper flux, and even for fluxes ~ 1/E_nu, the secondary flux will be difficult to observe experimentally.

5 pages, 2 figures