Dispersion and focusing of cosmic rays in magnetospheres

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new computational method to analyze how cosmic rays are dispersed and focused by planetary magnetospheres, improving understanding of cosmic ray interactions with planetary atmospheres.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel code, CosmicTransmutation, that models cosmic ray trajectory dispersion and focusing in magnetospheres, a process often overlooked in planetary irradiation studies.

Findings

Dispersion and focusing significantly affect cosmic ray irradiation spectra.

The new code enables more accurate modeling of cosmic ray interactions.

Results highlight the importance of magnetic field effects on cosmic ray paths.

Abstract

Simulating the irradiation of planetary atmospheres by cosmic ray particles requires, among others, the ability to understand and to quantify the interactions of charged particles with planetary magnetic fields. Here we present a process that is very often ignored in such studies; the dispersion and focusing of cosmic ray trajectories in magnetospheres. The calculations were performed using our new code CosmicTransmutation, which has been developed to study cosmogenic nuclide production in meteoroids and planetary atmospheres and which includes the computation of the irradiation spectrum on top of the atmosphere. Here we discuss effects caused by dispersion and focusing of cosmic ray particle trajectories.