Observation of seasonal variation of atmospheric multiple-muon events in the MINOS Near and Far Detectors

2015 American Physical Society. We report the first observation of seasonal modulations in the rates of cosmic ray multiple-muon events at two underground sites, the MINOS Near Detector with an overburden of 225 mwe, and the MINOS Far Detector site at 2100 mwe. At the deeper site, multiple-muon events with muons separated by more than 8 m exhibit a seasonal rate that peaks during the summer, similar to that of single-muon events. In contrast and unexpectedly, the rate of multiple-muon events with muons separated by less than 5-8 m, and the rate of multiple-muon events in the smaller, shallower Near Detector, exhibit a seasonal rate modulation that peaks in the winter.

Adamson, P., Anghel, I., Aurisano, A., Barr, G., Bishai, M., Blake, A., ... Zwaska, R.

Adamson, P||Anghel, I||Aurisano, A||Barr, G||Bishai, M||Blake, A||Bock, GJ||Bogert, D||Cao, SV||Castromonte, CM||Childress, S||Coelho, JAB||Corwin, L||Cronin-Hennessy, D||de Jong, JK||Devan, AV||Devenish, NE||Diwan, MV||Escobar, CO||Evans, JJ||Falk, E||Feldman, GJ||Frohne, MV||Gallagher, HR||Gomes, RA||Goodman, MC||Gouffon, P||Graf, N||Gran, R||Grzelak, K||Habig, A||Hahn, SR||Hartnell, J||Hatcher, R||Holin, A||Huang, J||Hylen, J||Irwin, GM||Isvan, Z||James, C||Jensen, D||Kafka, T||Kasahara, SMS||Koizumi, G||Kordosky, M||Kreymer, A||Lang, K||Ling, J||Litchfield, PJ||Lucas, P||Mann, WA||Marshak, ML||Mayer, N||McGivern, C||Medeiros, MM||Mehdiyev, R||Meier, JR||Messier, MD||Miller, WH||Mishra, SR||Sher, S Moed||Moore, CD||Mualem, L||Musser, J||Naples, D||Nelson, JK||Newman, HB||Nichol, RJ||Nowak, JA||O'Connor, J||Orchanian, M||Osprey, S||Pahlka, RB||Paley, J||Patterson, RB||Pawloski, G||Perch, A||Phan-Budd, S||Plunkett, RK||Poonthottathil, N||Qiu, X||Radovic, A||Rebel, B||Rosenfeld, C||Rubin, HA||Sanchez, MC||Schneps, J||Schreckenberger, A||Schreiner, P||Sharma, R||Sousa, A||Tagg, N||Talaga, RL||Thomas, J||Thomson, MA||Tian, X||Timmons, A||Tognini, SC||Toner, R||Torretta, D||Urheim, J||Vahle, P||Viren, B||Weber, A||Webb, RC||White, C||Whitehead, L||Whitehead, LH||Wojcicki, SG||Zwaska, R

Observation of seasonal variation of atmospheric multiple-muon events in the MINOS Near and Far Detectors Academic Article