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.

arXiv comment24 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (12)

• Time dependence of the proton flux measured by PAMELA during the July 2006 - December 2009 solar minimum
• Cosmic X-ray background and Earth albedo Spectra with Swift/BAT
• Protons in near earth orbit
• Heliospheric modulation of cosmic rays during the neutron monitor era: Calibration using PAMELA data for 2006--2010
• Time dependence of the e^- flux measured by PAMELA during the July 2006 - December 2009 solar minimum
• Cosmic-Ray Background Flux Model based on a Gamma-Ray Large-Area Space Telescope Balloon Flight Engineering Model
• New local interstellar spectra for protons, Helium and Carbon derived from PAMELA and Voyager 1 observations
• Understanding NaI(Tl) crystal background for dark matter searches
• 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
• Study of the properties of Cosmic rays and solar X-Ray Flares by balloon borne experiments
• Detection of Crab radiation with a meteorological balloon borne phoswich detector

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Hadron Interactions for Arbitrary Energies and Species, with Applications to Cosmic rays
• Extensive study of radiation dose on human body at aviation altitude through Monte Carlo simulation
• Interpreting the GeV-TeV Gamma-Ray Spectra of Local Giant Molecular Clouds using GEANT4 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