Nuclear Cosmic Rays propagation in the Atmosphere

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how nuclear cosmic rays propagate through the atmosphere and calculates atmospheric corrections to improve the accuracy of cosmic ray measurements, especially at high energies, using Boron and Carbon as test cases.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of atmospheric corrections for cosmic ray flux measurements, highlighting their significance at high energies.

Findings

Corrections become dominant at energies above 100 GeV/n.

Atmospheric effects significantly impact cosmic ray flux measurements.

The study improves the accuracy of cosmic ray data interpretation.

Abstract

The transport of the nuclear cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere is studied and the atmospheric corrections to be applied to the measurements are calculated. The contribution of the calculated corrections to the accuracy of the experimental results are discussed and evaluated over the kinetic energy range 10-10$^{3}$ GeV/n. The Boron (B) and Carbon (C) elements system is used as a test case. It is shown that the required corrections become largely dominant at the highest energies investigated. The results are discussed.