Simulation of Cosmic Ray MUON Charge Ratio at Energies Up To 10 Tev Using EPOS LHC

Abstract

Cosmic ray muons are produced by the interaction of primary particles with nuclei in the upper parts of the atmosphere. The charge ratio of cosmic ray muons is the ratio of the number of positive muons to negative muons. It gives valuable information on the hadronic interaction processes in the atmosphere such as the mass of the primary particle. The value of the cosmic ray muon charge ratio has been measured by several experiments to be 12766±0.0032 (the CMS detector), 1.374 ± 0.004 and 1.371 ± 0.003(the MINOS experiment for underground and surface respectively), 1.2254± 0.03(the CosmoALEPH collaboration for the zenith 500) .A simulated value of 1.125± 0.015 1.125± 0.015 was obtained by Namasaka using QGSJET(01).CORSIKA is a package of programs used in the simulation of extensive air showers. It has several high energy interaction models such as QGSJET, DPMJET and EPOS. It gives four-dimensional evolution of the extensive air showers in the atmosphere. In this work, the EPOS LHC model was used to simulate the air showers and the muon charge ratio where a proton was used as the primary particle and the energy considered up to 10TeV. Energy cuts were set to enable easy tracking of the muons. The simulated value of the cosmic ray muon charge ratio within the zenith angles 00 to 890 obtained is 1.3475 ± 0.0619. The charge ratio obtained shows an increasing trend with increase in energy and this compares well with both the experimental and parameterization values so far reported.