Simulation of Cosmic Rays in the Earth's Atmosphere and Interpretation of Observed Counts in an X-ray Detector at Balloon Altitude Near Tropical Region

Abstract

The study of secondary particles produced by the cosmic-ray interaction in the Earth's atmosphere is very crucial as these particles mainly constitute the background counts produced in the high-energy detectors at balloon and satellite altitudes. In the present work, we calculate the abundance of cosmic-ray generated secondary particles at various heights of the atmosphere by means of a Monte Carlo simulation and use this result to understand the background counts in our X-ray observations using balloon-borne instruments operating near the tropical latitude (geomagnetic latitude: $\sim 14.50^{\circ }$ N). For this purpose, we consider a 3D description of the atmospheric and geomagnetic field configurations surrounding the Earth, as well as the electromagnetic and nuclear interaction processes using Geant4 simulation toolkit. Subsequently, we use a realistic mass model description of the detector under consideration, to simulate the counts produced in the detector due to secondary cosmic-ray particles.

24 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Cosmic X-ray background and Earth albedo Spectra with Swift/BAT
• Heliospheric modulation of cosmic rays during the neutron monitor era: Calibration using PAMELA data for 2006--2010
• Measurement of secondary cosmic ray intensity at Regener-Pfotzer height using low-cost weather balloons and its correlation with solar activity
• Study of high energy phenomena from near space using low-cost meteorological balloons

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Extensive study of radiation dose on human body at aviation altitude through Monte Carlo simulation
• The design and performance of CUBES -- a CubeSat X-ray detector
• Background model of Phoswich X-ray detector on board small balloon
• Monte Carlo Simulation of CRAND Protons Trapped at Low Earth Orbits