Distribution of secondary particles intensities over Earth’s surface: Effect of the geomagnetic field

Abstract

We use a Corsika package (Heck et al., 1998) and an AMS-01 flight data (Alcaraz et al., 2000) to evaluate a distribution of secondary particles in the Earth atmosphere. Distribution covers all longitudes and latitudes of STS-91 Space Shuttle flight trajectory to Mir Space Station. Moreover distribution covers all depth in the atmosphere in evaluated area. We show distributions for e-, e+, μ+, μ-, gammas, hadrons and Cherenkov light from primary protons component of cosmic rays flux. Our results compare favorably with other estimates made by different techniques. We also estimate a UV light production (300-400 nm) by electron component of secondaries at the top of the atmosphere and at ISS orbit. IntroductionCosmic Ray (CR hereafter) particles come to the vicinity of Earth from outer space. The flux of these particles is isotropic outside Earth's magnetosphere; inside the magnetosphere the flux is affected by the strength of the geomagnetic field. The influence of the geomagnetic field is such that the flux of galactic cosmic ray at the top of the atmosphere is not constant being the highest in the polar regions and lowest in the equatorial regions. The most precise measurement of this distribution to date has been provided from an analysis of the AMS-01 data (Alcaraz et al. 2000) who published the intensities for primary and secondary protons at low orbit for ten geomagnetic regions.

Determination of local muon flux using astronomical Charge Coupled Device

“…The exponent =  n 1.95 0.08 for muons with energies above 1 GeV is in good agreement with Grieder [36]. The function which is given to the inputs for fitting is: Considering the reported value by Bobik et al [33]: Further investigation of the simulation result shows that about half of the muons are missed in counting method as: Therefore, as we have indicated in simulation of muon angular distribution at the level of Maragheh, detected muons with zenith angles between 30°and 90°by our balanced detector are half of the total muons. According to the applied angular accuracy in our simulation, the error is less than: D m 0.01…”

“…To calculate the weighting factors we have used ( ) ( ) ( ) ) in ( )m sr s . In our simulation, we assumed that the collisions occur randomly on a hypothetical surface above the atmosphere with an area of 1 144 steradians as Bobik et al, was suggested [33] (i.e. particles hitting the atmosphere out of this surface do not contribute in the flux of secondary particles for the desired geographical location).…”