Monitoring of the atmospheric electric field and cosmic-ray flux for the interpretation of results in high-energy astroparticle physics experiments

摘要

Atmospheric electric fields influence experiments using the atmosphere as a detector for very weak fluxes of highest-energy gamma rays and protonsuclei coming from galactic and extragalactic sources. Multiplication of electrons and gamma rays in strong atmospheric electric fields change particle numbers and energy spectra of the secondary shower particles and consequently influence the reconstructed properties of the primary particles. Here, we present a MC study using the CORSIKA package to explore and quantify these effects.