The Lorentz factor is and . Traversal of the height takes proper time . Using the exponential decay law with the given muon lifetime,
The laboratory flight lasts about , while the elapsed proper time is about . This is the probability of surviving decay to the surface, with atmospheric energy loss and detector efficiency neglected.
Treat the atmospheric proton as stationary in the Earth frame, the incident antiproton as vertically downward, and neglect atmospheric energy loss, scattering and the Earth's curvature initially. Take . Conservation of energy and equal outgoing energies give
Equal energies imply equal momentum magnitudes. Their transverse momenta cancel, so the two muons have equal downward components , where
Each muon therefore makes an angle with the downward vertical satisfying
The paths are not both vertical: replacing their path lengths by would miss this two-body kinematic correction. Since , the proper flight time over vertical height is
For equal-energy atmospheric muon-pair survival, independent exponential particle decays with mean proper muon lifetime , both survive with probability
Equivalently each travels about , with proper flight time about , and survives with probability about . The result is decay-only survival to an ideal surface, not a prediction including air interactions or detector efficiency. For a spherical Earth of radius , the exact path length is ; inserting gives a small curvature correction.