On the Nonlinear Dependence of Underground Muon Rate on Atmospheric Temperature Observed at Daya Bay
Abstract
The underground cosmic-ray muon rate is modulated by atmospheric temperature. It can be explained by the theories of Barrett, Gaisser, and others. However, the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment observes a nonlinear temperature dependence. We find that, when deriving the temperature dependence of the muon rate, existing theories consider only the impact of the local temperature on muon production at the layer where muons are produced. In this work, we provide a more general solution to the cascade equations that fully depicts how the entire temperature profile influences the final muon rate. The corresponding definitions of the effective temperature weight and temperature coefficient are also presented. We have examined the results using the numerical tool MCEq with real atmospheric temperature inputs. A linear modulation is recovered and verified. This work can help explain the nonlinear effect observed at Daya Bay and provide a more refined theoretical framework for calculating the temperature coefficient in other experiments.
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BibTeX
@misc{liao2026nonlinear,
title = {{On the Nonlinear Dependence of Underground Muon Rate on Atmospheric Temperature Observed at Daya Bay}},
author = {Lei Liao and Taichong Ge and Zhe Wang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.09116},
eprint = {2606.09116},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.09116},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - On the Nonlinear Dependence of Underground Muon Rate on Atmospheric Temperature Observed at Daya Bay
AU - Lei Liao
AU - Taichong Ge
AU - Zhe Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.09116
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.09116
AB - The underground cosmic-ray muon rate is modulated by atmospheric temperature. It can be explained by the theories of Barrett, Gaisser, and others. However, the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment observes a nonlinear temperature dependence. We find that, when deriving the temperature dependence of the muon rate, existing theories consider only the impact of the local temperature on muon production at the layer where muons are produced. In this work, we provide a more general solution to the cascade equations that fully depicts how the entire temperature profile influences the final muon rate. The corresponding definitions of the effective temperature weight and temperature coefficient are also presented. We have examined the results using the numerical tool MCEq with real atmospheric temperature inputs. A linear modulation is recovered and verified. This work can help explain the nonlinear effect observed at Daya Bay and provide a more refined theoretical framework for calculating the temperature coefficient in other experiments.
ER -