Atmospheric gamma-ray observation with the BETS detector for calibrating atmospheric neutrino flux calculations

Abstract

We observed atmospheric gamma rays around 10 GeV at balloon altitudes (15--25 km) and at a mountain (2770 m a.s.l). The observed results were compared with Monte Carlo calculations to find that an interaction model (Lund FRITIOF1.6) used in an old neutrino flux calculation was not good enough for describing the observed values. Instead, we found that two other nuclear interaction models, Lund FRITIOF7.02 and DPMJET3.03, gave much better agreement with the observations. Our data will serve for examining nuclear interaction models and for deriving a reliable absolute atmospheric neutrino flux in the GeV region.