Searching for correlations of geomagnetic activities with high-energy EAS muons

TL;DR

This study investigates how Earth's geomagnetic field influences muon distributions in high-energy air showers, revealing asymmetries that depend on geomagnetic activity and primary cosmic ray composition, with implications for future experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to quantify muon asymmetry in air showers and demonstrates its sensitivity to geomagnetic storms and primary particle types.

Findings

Muon asymmetry correlates with geomagnetic activity.

Maximum transverse separation indicates primary composition.

Sensitivity to geomagnetic storms suggests potential for space weather studies.

Abstract

The paper aims to explore the asymmetry of the muon content of non-vertical and very high energy Monte Carlo showers due to the influence of Earth's geomagnetic field. Simulations have shown that the geomagnetic field modifies the trajectories of muons in a shower producing a polar asymmetry in the density/number of positive and negative muons in the shower front plane. The asymmetry is quantified by a transverse separation between the positive and negative muons barycentric positions through opposite quadrants across the shower core. The dependence of this transverse muon barycenter separation (TMBS) on polar position shows a clear maximum at a position that is correlated with the primary composition and geomagnetic activities. It is noticed that the maximum TMBS parameter exhibits sensitivity to any transient weakening of Earth's magnetic shield caused by geomagnetic storm originated from bursting solar processes. Obtained simulation results are quite important to design any possible new experiment based on these features of muons in extensive air showers.