Cosmic rays and atmospheric leptons: probes of the standard model and beyond

Presented by Mary Hall Reno, University of Iowa

Cosmic ray interactions led to particle discoveries in the era before particle accelerators were built. More recently, neutrino fluxes from cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere have led to our understanding that neutrinos have mass. I will review how the atmospheric flux of neutrinos and muons is evaluated theoretically. I will present our results on very high energy lepton fluxes from charmed particle production and decay in the atmosphere. Finally, I will discuss some examples of the potential for the measurement of the atmospheric lepton fluxes to constrain non-standard particle physics models.