An Experimental Evaluation of Various Rigidity Models

摘要

Atmospheric cosmic-ray fluxes have recently been measured over large portions of the globe on a series of flights of a United States Air Force jet aircraft. The measured fluxes have been plotted as a function of the vertical cutoff rigidity for several different models. The rigorous trajectory calculations of Shea et al. (AFCRL-65-705 Environmental Res. Paper 141, Sept 1965) give good agreement with the counting rates. The Makino model also orders these data equally well, and therefore must be within a few percent of the value determined by rigorous orbit calculations taken over the portions of the globe covered in this survey. The other models are demonstrably worse, and a discussion of where these models are inadequate is given. Particular attention is paid to the use of the L parameter as a substitute for rigorous integration procedures. It is shown both experimentally and theoretically that the L parameter is not a good demographic parameter for galactic cosmic radiation at the lower latitudes, but should be sufficiently accurate at higher latitudes for most purposes. (Author)