A proposed method for measurement of cosmic-ray chemical composition based on geomagnetic spectroscopy

Abstract

The effect of the geomagnetic Lorentz force on the muon component of extensive air shower (EAS) has been studied in a Monte Carlo generated simulated data sample. This geomagnetic field affects the paths of muons in an EAS, causing a local contrast or polar asymmetry in the abundance of positive and negative muons about the shower axis. The asymmetry can be approximately expressed as a function of transverse separation between the positive and negative muons barycentric positions in the EAS through opposite quadrants across the shower core in the shower front plane. In the present study, it is found that the transverse muon barycenter separation and its maximum value obtained from the polar variation of the parameter are higher for Iron primaries than protons for highly inclined showers. Hence, in principle, these parameters can be exploited to the measurement of primary cosmic-ray chemical composition. Possibility of practical realization of the proposed method in a real experiment is briefly discussed.

13 pages, 25 figures, submitted to Journal

References in corpus (5)

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
• New facts about muon production in Extended Air Shower simulations
• Study of cosmic ray events with high muon multiplicity using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• The center of lateral iso-density contours for inclined cosmic air showers
• The muon charge ratio in cosmic ray air showers

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Searching for correlations of geomagnetic activities with high-energy EAS muons
• The shape of the electron and muon lateral distribution functions of extensive air showers
• Probing the mass composition of primary cosmic rays from the effect of the geomagnetic field on EAS muons: A simulation study