Cosmic ray interactions in the solar system: The Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect

TL;DR

This paper simulates the Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect, where ultra-high-energy cosmic ray nuclei interacting with solar photons may produce detectable simultaneous air showers on Earth, highlighting the potential for dedicated detectors to observe this phenomenon.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulation of the distributions of air shower distances caused by the effect, considering solar photon spectra and magnetic fields.

Findings

Distributions of shower distances depend on the primary cosmic ray's proximity to the Sun.

Current detector arrays have limited capabilities, but dedicated arrays could measure the effect.

The simulation uses full solar photon spectra and magnetic field models.

Abstract

The Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect of collisions of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray nuclei with photons emitted by the sun may cause two simultaneous air showers on Earth. This effect is simulated using the full energy spectrum of solar photons, ray tracing through the interplanetary magnetic field and upper limit values for the iron and oxygen cosmic ray fluxes. Only the most abundant interactions in which a single proton is emitted from the nucleus are considered. For the first time the distributions of distances between the individual showers at Earth as a function of the distance of the primary cosmic ray to the Sun are shown. These distributions are used to estimate the capabilities of current detector arrays to measure the Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect and to show that a dedicated array is capable of measuring this effect.