Atmospheric Temperature Effect in secondary cosmic rays observed with a two square meter ground-based detector

Abstract

A high resolution 2 m${}^2$ tracking detector, based on timing Resistive Plate Chamber (tRPC) cells, has been installed at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in order to improve our understanding of the cosmic rays arriving at the Earth's surface. Following a short commisioning of the detector, a study of the atmospheric temperature effect of the secondary cosmic ray component was carried out. A method based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been implemented in order to obtain the distribution of temperature coefficients, $W_T(h)$, using as input the measured rate of nearly vertical cosmic ray tracks, showing good agreement with the theoretical expectation. The method succesfully removes the correlation present between the different atmospheric layers, that would be dominant otherwise. We briefly describe the initial calibration and pressure correction procedures, essential to isolate the temperature effect. Overall, the measured cosmic ray rate displays the expected anticorrelation with the effective atmospheric temperature, through the coefficient ${\alpha }_T=-0.279\pm 0.051$ \%/K. Rates follow the seasonal variations, and unusual short-term events are clearly identified too.

arXiv comment18 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to Earth and Space Science

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• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Principal Component Analysis of Ground Level Enhancement of Cosmic Ray Events
• Monitoring the upper atmospheric temperature and interplanetary magnetic field with the GRAPES-3 muon telescope