Atmospheric neutrinos observed in underground detectors

Atmospheric neutrinos are produced when the primary cosmic ray beam hits the atmosphere and initiates atmospheric cascades. Secondary mesons decay and give rise to neutrinos. The neutrino production was calculated and compared with the neutrino fluxes detected in underground detectors. Contained neutrino events are characterized by observation of an interaction within the fiducial volume of the detector when the incoming particle is not observed. Both the neutrino flux and the containment requirement restrict the energy of the neutrinos observed in contained interactions to less than several GeV. Neutrinos interact with the rock surrounding the detector but only muon neutrino interactions can be observed, as the electron energy is dissipated too fast in the rock. The direction of the neutrino is preserved in the interaction and at energies above 1 TeV the angular resolution is restricted by the scattering of the muon in the rock. The muon rate reflects the neutrino spectrum above some threshold energy, determined by the detector efficiency for muons.