Zenith angular distributions of atmospheric high-energy neutrinos

In this paper, we present a new calculation of the atmospheric neutrino flux in the energy range 10–10⁷ GeV, which reveals sizable differences in muon neutrino flux predictions obtained with known hadronic models. The calculation is based on the method of solving nuclear cascade equations in the atmosphere, which takes into account the nonscaling behavior of inclusive cross sections for particle production, the increase in the total inelastic hadron-nucleus cross sections, and the non-power-law character of the primary cosmic ray spectrum. The efficiency of the method was recently tested in atmospheric muon flux calculations. The results of neutrino spectrum calculations have been compared with Frejus, AMANDA-II, and IceCube measurement data.