Published July 1, 2021 | Version Accepted Version + Published
Journal Article Open

Seasonal variation of multiple-muon cosmic ray air showers observed in the NOvA detector on the surface

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Abstract

We report the rate of cosmic ray air showers with multiplicities exceeding 15 muon tracks recorded in the NOvA Far Detector between May 2016 and May 2018. The detector is located on the surface under an overburden of 3.6 meters water equivalent. We observe a seasonal dependence in the rate of multiple-muon showers, which varies in magnitude with multiplicity and zenith angle. During this period, the effective atmospheric temperature and surface pressure ranged between 210 K and 230 K and 940 mbar and 990 mbar, respectively; the shower rates are anticorrelated with the variation in the effective temperature. The variations are about 30% larger for the highest multiplicities than the lowest multiplicities and 20% larger for showers near the horizon than vertical showers.

Additional Information

© 2021 Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3. Received 11 May 2021; accepted 8 July 2021; published 30 July 2021. This document was prepared by the NOvA Collaboration using the resources of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, High Energy Physics User Facility. Fermilab is managed by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, acting under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy; the U.S. National Science Foundation; the Department of Science and Technology, India; the European Research Council; the MSMT CR, GA UK, Czech Republic; the RAS, RFBR, RMES, RSF, and BASIS Foundation, Russia; CNPq and FAPEG, Brazil; STFC, UKRI, and the Royal Society, United Kingdom; and the state and University of Minnesota. We are grateful for the contributions of the staffs of the University of Minnesota at the Ash River Laboratory and of Fermilab.

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Published - PhysRevD.104.012014.pdf

Accepted Version - 2105.03848.pdf

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Identifiers

Eprint ID
110337
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210820-232309793

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Funding

Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-AC02-07CH11359
NSF
Department of Science and Technology (India)
European Research Council (ERC)
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Czech Republic)
Charles University Grant Agency (GA UK)
Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Foundation for Basic Research
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Russian Science Foundation
BASIS Foundation
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás (FAPEG)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
UK Research and Innovation
Royal Society
State of Minnesota
University of Minnesota

Dates

Created
2021-08-21
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Updated
2021-08-21
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