Measuring Seasonal Variations in Neutrons from Near-Horizontal Muons

An analysis is performed for muons passing through the Large Volume Detector (LVD) horizontally over 15 years of operation. Horizontal muons pass through the ground at around 5 km w.e. with a threshold energy of 4.7 TeV. The energy characteristics of the LVD allow the detection of neutrons produced by muons in the detector’s material. The great volume of statistics ensures high accuracy in determining seasonal variations in the number of neutrons. The temporal distributions of pulses with energy releases of 1 to 12 MeV are used in a time interval of 150–650 μs after a muon crosses the setup to find the specific number of neutrons.