Studies of Atmospheric Muon Fluxes at the prototype Iron-CALorimeter detector

The proposed 50kton INO-ICAL experiment is an upcoming underground high-energy physics experiment planned to be commissioned at Bodi hills near Theni, India (9∘57′N, 77∘16′E) to study various properties of neutrino oscillations using atmospheric neutrinos produced by extensive air shower phenomena. To study the neutrino oscillation from atmospheric neutrinos, precise knowledge about the neutrino flux at the experimental site is essential and which is predominantly affected by the uncertainties in the hadronic interaction models. These interaction models can be tuned using the measured muon fluxes at the surfaces. To measure the muon flux near the experimental site, an experimental setup consisting of a stack of 12 layers of glass resistive plate chambers each with a size of ∼2m ×2m has been built at IICHEP, Madurai to study the performance and long-term stability of the resistive plate chambers (RPCs) as well as its electronics for the front-end and subsequent signal processing. The experiment was performed in two phases, where the readout electronics at both of them were different.
 

The muon data recorded from the phase-1 is used to study the zenith angle distribution and vertical flux of muons at Madurai (9∘56′N, 78∘00′E and at an altitude of 160 m above mean sea level). Using the phase-2 data, the east-west asymmetry of the cosmic muons at different zenith angles is also estimated and the comparison of these observed values with phenomenological models is performed. The commissioning, data analysis, Monte Carlo simulation and physics outcomes from the prototype experiment will be presented during the presentation.