Dispersion and focusing of cosmic rays in magnetospheres

Abstract

Simulating the irradiation of planetary atmospheres by cosmic ray particles requires, among others, the ability to understand and to quantify the interactions of charged particles with planetary magnetic fields. Here we present a process that is very often ignored in such studies; the dispersion and focusing of cosmic ray trajectories in magnetospheres. The calculations were performed using our new code CosmicTransmutation, which has been developed to study cosmogenic nuclide production in meteoroids and planetary atmospheres and which includes the computation of the irradiation spectrum on top of the atmosphere. Here we discuss effects caused by dispersion and focusing of cosmic ray particle trajectories.

References in corpus (3)

• Balloon Measurements of Cosmic Ray Muon Spectra in the Atmosphere along with those of Primary Protons and Helium Nuclei over Mid-Latitude
• Measurements of cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra from the BESS-Polar long-duration balloon flights over Antarctica
• Time dependence of the flux of helium nuclei in cosmic rays measured by the PAMELA experiment between July 2006 and December 2009