Impact of intrinsic charm amount in the nucleon and saturation effects on the prompt atmospheric $$\nu _{\mu }$$ ν μ flux for IceCube

Abstract

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 paper we estimate the related cross sections 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. 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 ( $$P_{ic}$$ P ic ). We demonstrate that for $$P_{ic} \sim $$ P ic ∼ 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.