Preliminary Results From the Latin American Giant Observatory Space Weather Simulation Chain

Abstract

The Space Weather program of the Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) Collaboration was designed to study the variation of the flux of atmospheric secondary particles at ground level produced during the interaction of cosmic rays with the air. This work complements and expands the inference capabilities of the LAGO detection network to identify the influence of solar activity on the particle flux, at places having different geomagnetic rigidity cut‐offs and atmospheric depths. This program is developed through a series of Monte Carlo sequential simulations to compute the intensity spectrum of the various components of the radiation field on the ground. A key feature of these calculations is that we performed detailed radiation transport computations as a function of incident direction, time, altitude, and latitude and longitude. Magnetic rigidity calculations and corrections for geomagnetic field activity are established by using the MAGNETOCOSMICS code, and the estimation of the flux of secondaries at ground level is implemented by using the CORSIKA code; thus, we can examine the local peculiarities in the penumbral regions with a more realistic description of the atmospheric and geomagnetic response in these complex regions of the rigidity space. As an example of our calculation scheme, we report some result on the flux at ground level for two LAGO locations: Bucaramanga, Colombia, and San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, for the geomagnetically active period of May 2005.

Modeling the LAGO's detectors response to secondary particles at ground level from the Antarctic to Mexico

“…The flux of secondary particles at the ground was calculated for each LAGO site, following the method developed in [8]. In this method, the GCR flux (Φ) is calculated at an altitude of 112 km a.s.l.…”

“…It covers a large range of geomagnetic rigidity cutoffs and atmospheric absorption depths [6], (see Figure1). In this sense, LAGO is promoting training and research in astroparticle physics in Latin America, covering three main areas: search for the high-energy component of gamma ray bursts at high altitude sites, space weather phenomena, and background radiation at the ground level [7,8].…”

“…We developed the full computational framework to estimate the signals expected at the LAGO detector sites. This framework, which includes the effect of the geomagnetic field on the GCR propagation [8], is composed by a set of individual tools, collectively named as ARTI 1…”

Assessment of the Radiation Environment at Commercial Jet‐Flight Altitudes During GLE 72 on 10 September 2017 Using Neutron Monitor Data

“…While cosmic rays (CRs) of galactic origin permanently govern the radiation environment in the global atmosphere, particles of solar origin, specifically during strong SEP and GLE events can considerably enhance the flux of secondary CR particles in the atmosphere. Primary CR particles penetrate into the atmosphere and induce a complicated nuclear‐electromagnetic‐muon cascade, producing large amount of various types of secondary particles, namely, neutrons, protons, γ , e − , e + , μ − , μ + , π − , and π + , distributed in a wide energy range, which eventually deposit their energy and ionize the ambient air (Asorey et al, ; Bazilevskaya et al, ). Hence, CR particles determine the complex radiation field at flight altitudes (Shea & Smart, ; Spurny et al, ).…”

Performance of the Water Cherenkov detector LAGO-Chiapas, Mexico

“…Current status of the LAGO project in each of the participant countries (left) and geomagnetic rigidity cutoff (R c ) for the different LAGO sites as a function of its latitude (right), the squares in the black circle correspond to the rigidity cutoff in Chiapas ∼ 9 GV[1].…”