Propagation of muons and taus at high-energies

Dec, 2000
25 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.D 63 (2001) 094020
e-Print:

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Abstract:
The photonuclear contribution to charged lepton energy loss has been re-evaluated taking into account HERA results on real and virtual photon interactions with nucleons. With large Q2Q^2 processes incorporated, the average muon range in rock for muon energies of 10910^9 GeV is reduced by only 5% as compared with the standard treatment. We have calculated the tau energy loss for energies up to 10910^9 GeV taking into consideration the decay of the tau. A Monte Carlo evaluation of tau survival probability and range show that at energies below 10710810^7-10^8 GeV, depending on the material, only tau decays are important. At higher energies the tau energy losses are significant, reducing the survival probability of the tau. We show that the average range for tau is shorter than its decay length and reduce to 17 km in water for an incident tau energy of 10910^9 GeV, as compared with its decay length of 49 km at that energy. In iron, the average tau range is 4.7 km for the same incident energy.
  • lepton nucleus: interaction
  • muon: energy loss
  • tau: energy loss
  • exchange: one-photon
  • total cross section: energy dependence
  • tau: path length
  • numerical calculations: Monte Carlo
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