Speaker: Rafał Maciuła, Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Abstract: The predictions for the atmospheric neutrino flux at high energies
strongly depend on the contribution of prompt neutrinos, which are determined by the production of charmed
mesons in the atmosphere at very forward rapidities.
In this seminar I will present our estimations of the related cross
sections, recently obtained and discussed taking
into account the presence of an intrinsic charm (IC) component in the proton wave function and the QCD dynamics modified by the onset of saturation effects. In this study the impact on the predictions for the prompt neutrino flux is investigated assuming different values for the probability to find the IC in the nucleon (Pic). We demonstrate that for Pic ∼ 1%, the IC component dominates the high-energy prompt neutrino flux. A first comparison with the IceCube data is performed and upper limits on the amount of IC are obtained for the linear and nonlinear descriptions of the QCD dynamics.