Investigation of the PCR energy spectrum shape by the means of the local EAS muon density technique

The results of studying the primary cosmic radiation (PCR) flux in the energy range 10¹⁵–10¹⁸ eV at the NEVOD-DECOR experimental array using local muon density spectra are reported. The experimental distributions and the spectra obtained by simulation of EAS muon LDF using the CORSIKA code are compared. Possibilities of using a new method for analysis of muon bundle events on the basis of the primary energy estimator are discussed.     

Mass Composition of Cosmic Rays with Energies above 1017 eV According to the Data from the Muon Detectors of the Yakutsk EAS Array

The lateral distribution of muons in extensive air showers with energies above 1017 eV detected by underground scintillation detectors with a threshold of 1.0 GeV at the Yakutsk array in 1986–2016 has been analyzed. The experimental data on the muon flux density at a distance of 300 m from the shower axis have been compared to the calculations within various models of hadron interactions at ultrahigh energies. The experimental data are in the best agreement with the QGSJet01 and QGSJet II-04 models. The mass composition of cosmic rays in the energy range of (1–30) × 10¹⁷ eV changes from middle nuclei to a purely proton composition.

     

Investigation of the properties of the flux and interaction of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays by the method of local-muon-density spectra

A new method for studying extensive air showers is considered. The method is based on the phenomenology of the localmuon density. It is shown that measurement ofmuon-density spectra at various zenith angles makes it possible to obtain information about the energy spectrum, mass composition, and interaction of cosmic rays over a broad range of energies (10¹⁵–10¹⁸ eV) by using a single array of comparatively small size. The results obtained from a comparison of experimental data on muon bundles from the DECOR coordinate detector with the results of simulation performed under various assumptions on the properties of the primary flux and for various hadron-interaction models are presented, and possible versions of the interpretation of these results are discussed.     

Electromagnetic Interactions of High Energy Cosmic Ray Muons

This paper investigates the electromagnetic interactions of muons. The various processes such as knock-on electron-, bremsstrahlung-, direct electron pair production, and nuclear interactions are described in detail. The energy range concerned extends from 10⁹ eV up to 10¹⁵ eV for primary muons and from 10⁸ eV up to 10¹⁴ eV for energy transfers to the secondaries. On the one hand the measurement of muon interactions represents a test of quantum electrodynamics. On the other hand the high energies available in cosmic rays would possibly lead to the measurement of new processes or the detection of new particles. One hopes to find in the high energy domain the answer to the question why the muon exists at all and if there are properties (apart from differences in mass, lifetime, and lepton number) which distinguish it from a mere heavy electron. The different experimental techniques are described and the various experimental results on muon interactions are presented and compared with relevant QED-theories. Observed deviations between theory and experiment and anomalies in muon interactions are critically investigated and discussed in the light of experimental difficulties and interpretation problems. In general, agreement between theory and experiment is found, i.e. QED-theories describe the results adequately. However, some experiments claim to have detected anomalies in muon physics in the cosmic ray beam. But the hypotheses on new processes and new particles in the high energy range do not withstand a critical analysis. It is concluded that the observed deviations can be understood in the framework of conventional theories.     

Muon content of ultrahigh-energy air showers: Yakutsk data versus simulations

A sample of 33 extensive air showers (EASs) with estimated primary energies above 2 × 10¹⁹ eV and high-quality muon data recorded by the Yakutsk EAS array is analyzed. The observed muon density is compared event-by-event to that expected from CORSIKA simulations for primary protons and iron using SIBYLL and EPOS hadronic interaction models. The study suggests the presence of two distinct hadronic components, “light” and “heavy.” Simulations with EPOS are in good agreement with the expected composition in which the light component corresponds to protons and the heavy component to iron-like nuclei. With SIBYLL, simulated muon densities for iron primaries are a factor of ∼ 1.5 less than those observed for the heavy component for the same electromagnetic signal. Assuming a two-component proton-iron composition and the EPOS model, the fraction of protons with energies E > 10¹⁹ eV is 0.52_−0.20^+0.19 at the 95% C.L. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Fission of muonic 232Th and 239Pu

The neutron emission is studied following the formation of muonic atoms of ²³²Th and ²³⁹Pu. Energy and time distributions are measured. Various processes which contribute to the measured spectra are considered. A collective resonance model of the muon capture is used to calculate the nuclear excitation function. The probability of the radiationless nuclear excitations and the influence of the presence of the bound atomic muon on the fission barrier are discussed. The existing data for the $\text{Γ}{}_{\mathrm{n}}\text{Γ}{}_{\mathrm{f}}$, are analysed. As a result of the analysis the rates of the prompt and delayed fission events (due to the radiationless mu-atomic transitions and the nuclear muon capture, respectively) are deduced from the experimental data to be 0.006/muon and 0.045/muon for ²³²Th and 0.10/muon and 0.49/muon for ²³⁹Pu, respectively. The increase of the fission barrier for muonic atoms is confirmed. The experimental neutron rates can be consistently explained only if it is assumed that in both nucleides the K_α radiationless transitions do not induce fission. The increase of the fission barrier for ²³⁹Pu is hence deduced to be not less than 1.2 MeV. The fate of the atomic muon after the nuclear fission is briefly discussed. Its influence on the interpretation of the present results is found to be small.     

Characteristics of trimuon events observed in high-energy neutrino interactions

The properties of 76 neutrino-initiated μ^?μ^?μ⁺ events observed in the CDHS detector in the 350 GeV and 400 GeV wide-band beams at CERN are discussed. For neutrino energies 30 GeV and muon momenta ?4.5 GeV, the average trimuon rate is (3.0 ± 0.4) × 10^?5 of the single-muon event rate. The experimental distributions are compared with predictions from various models. The data cannot be understood in terms of either heavy-lepton or heavy-quark cascades; no evidence is found for such processes and upper limits for the two possibilities are established. The data can be understood in terms of the normal charged-current process with the additional production of a muon pair by both hadronic and electromagnetic processes.     

The study of prompt and delayed muon induced fission

The mean life times of negative muons bound to actinide nuclei have been measured by detecting the time difference between a stopped muon and the arrival of fragments from delayed fission after muon capture. The deduced capture ratesΛ _c are 1.392(4)·10⁷/s for²³⁷Np, 1.290(7)·10⁷/s for²⁴²Pu and 1.240(7)·10⁷/s for²⁴⁴Pu. The results are compared with published data for the fission and the neutron decay channels and for the electron decay of the bound muon. Including a former measurement ofΛ _c for²³⁹Pu, an isotopic dependence of the muon capture rates in the Pu isotopes is clearly observed.     

Precision measurement of the rate of nuclear muon capture in the muonic hydrogen atom and the determination of the pseudoscalar form factor of the nucleon

The rate Λ _S of nuclear muon capture by a proton from the hyperfine singlet ground state of the µp atom has been measured using a new experimental method based on a time-projection chamber operating in an ultrapure hydrogen gas at a pressure of 10 atm. The capture rate has been determined from the difference between the measured lifetime of the negative muon in hydrogen and the world average lifetime of the positive muon. The analysis of 10% of the collected statistics (2 × 10¹⁰) of µe decays yields the muon capture rate Λ _S = 725.0 ± 17.4 s^?1, from which the pseudoscalar form factor of the nucleon, g _P (q _c ² = ?0.88m _µ ² ) = 7.3 ± 1.1, is determined. The further analysis of the collected experimental data should improve the precision of this measurement by a factor of 3.     

Theory of location and associated hyperfine properties of the positive muon in La2CuO4

The current understanding regarding the location of the positive muon, which is a valuable tool for probing the magnetic properties of copper oxide superconducting systems, will be reviewed for La₂CuO₄. The results of our present investigations by the Unrestricted Hartree-Fock Cluster procedure, which leads to a location for the muon of about 1.08 Å away from an apical oxygen and with the O-⁺ direction making an angle of 25° with the O-Cu direction, will be discussed, including the magnitude and direction of the hyperfine field obtained from the calculated wave functions. These latter results, which are in reasonable agreement with earlier muon spin rotation data in powdered samples and recent data in single crystals, show the importance of including the local contact and dipolar contributions to the hyperfine field associated with the unpaired electron spin distribution in the neighborhood of the muon. Possible additional factors besides those included here, that will involve substantial computational efforts but could lead to a bridging of the remaining quantitative differences with experimental hyperfine data, will be discussed.     

Investigation of cosmic rays above the knee by means of muon bundles detected in a wide range of zenith angles

The results of investigation of muon bundles at the Earth’s surface in a wide range of zenith angles on the basis of the new phenomenological characteristic of extensive air showers—spectra of local muon density—have been investigated. Features of the local-density spectra are considered within a simple analytical model. The expected distributions of muon density in a wide range of zenith angles and primary energies, calculated on the basis of the CORSIKA code, are compared with the experimental data.     

Charm production and experimental data on cosmic neutrino flux

The results of calculation of atmospheric neutrino fluxes at sea level with energies up to 10⁷ GeV are presented. The calculations were performed within the empirical model based on modern data on inclusive cross sections of pion, kaon, and charmed particle production in nucleon-air nucleus interactions, obtained in experiments on accelerators up to nucleon energies of ～20 TeV. A comparison of the calculated and experimental data on cosmic muon neutrino fluxes measured on AMANDA II shows their agreement.     

Observation of muon level-crossing resonance in antiferromagnetic MnF2

We report the observation of μ⁺ Level-Crossing Resonances (LCR's) in the ordered phase of an antiferromagnetic material. Two LCR's were observed in MnF₂ as a function of longitudinal magnetic field in the temperature range between 10K and 65K. Both are attributed to a muon in an interstitial octahedral-like site. The low field resonance is attributed to a muon-nuclear spin flip-flop transition involving the two nearest neighbour¹⁹F nuclei. The high field resonance occurs when the applied field cancels the local hyperfine field on the muon. The positions and widths of the LCR's were seen to scale with the sublattice magnetization.     

The Precise Measurement of the μ+ Lifetime

The lifetime of the positive muon (τ_μ ⁺) can be directly associated with the Fermi Coupling Constant (G _F ), which is one of the most basic parameters of the Standard Model. However, the current experimental accuracy of the τ_μ ⁺ is ∼30 ppm and it has not been improved for more than 15 years. We propose a new experiment for a pulsed muon facility such as RIKEN-RAL to measure the muon lifetime with multi-decay per one time window method. The advantage of our setup, no time window limitation, enables us to test the exponential decay law (EDL) in the long decay time region at the same time. The preliminary analysis set a new upperlimit for the EDL deviation in the muon decay. We accumulated ∼10¹⁰ muon decays and analysis is in progress. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Electronic structure of hydrogen and muonium in Al,Mg and Cu

The electronic structure of hydrogen and muonium in simple metals is investigated. The spherical solid model potential is used for the discrete lattice and the Blatt correction for lattice dilation. The proton and muon are kept at the octahedral sites in the fcc and hcp lattices and self-consistent non-linear screening calculations are carried out. The scattering phase shifts, electronic charge density, effective impurity potential, self-energy, charge transfer, residual resistivity and Knight shift are calculated. The spherical solid potential changes the scattering character of impurity. The phase shifts are found slowly converging. The scattering is more prominent in Al than in Mg and Cu. The virtual bound states of proton and muon are favoured in all the three metals. The calculated value of residual resistivity for CuH is in good agreement with the experimental value. The results for Knight shift forμ ⁺ in Cu and Mg are in reasonable agreement with the experimental values while those forμ ⁺ in Al are lower than the experimental value. The analytical expressions for effective impurity potential and electronic charge density are suggested.     

Spin fluctuations in the vicinity of a charged particle in solid3He

At low temperature the positively charged muon (μ⁺) in solid³He is localized in a polaron which, unlike a chemically bound complex, is held together with polarizational attraction (van der Waals force). The dynamic effects in the muon relaxation are determined by the spin exchange of the³He atoms in the polaron. In crystals with large molar volumes (melting pressureP _m<60 bar) the rate of magnetic field fluctuations at the muon site is at least one order of magnitude lower than in an unperturbed crystal. In an external electric field the μ⁺ produces an anisotropic local distortion which reduces the rate of the local³He spin exchange and leads to an increase of the muon spin relaxation rate.     

The muon capture in <Superscript>16</Superscript>O: the angular and polarization correlations

Longitudinal polarization of the daughter nuclei ¹⁶N which arises in μ⁻ capture on ¹⁶O as a function of the recoil angle, together with the angular distribution and the alignment of the recoil nucleus are calculated. The neutrinos born escape mainly along the muon spin. The polarization is found to vary from zero (recoil momentum counter to the muon spin direction) up to 50% (along the muon spin direction). The results can be applied to the experimental tests of T conservation, to the analysis of the projects of constructing the powerful mono-energetic neutrino sources, to the experimental study of the pseudo-scalar form factor and the K-electron capture, and to other spin-polarization correlation experiments.     

The dependence of muon intensity on the geomagnetic latitude

The vertical momentum spectrum of cosmic-ray muons has been determined by a counter controlled neon-hodoscope in the spectral region (0.2–3) Bev/c at geomagnetic latitude 12 °N. The observed spectrum agrees satisfactorily with the calculated spectrum of Olbert for muon momentum above 1.8 Bev/c. Below about 1.8 Bev/c, the measured spectrum exceeds slightly the theoretical spectrum of Olbert, calculated for the same geomagnetic latitude. The measured spectrum agrees with the experimental spectrum of Allkofer at 9 °N, but is somewhat below the spectrum obtained by Hayman in the low momentum region at 57.5 °N. This shows that there exists a latitude dependence of the low momentum muon spectrum. The estimated integral intensity of muon of momentum ≧320 Mev/c is found to be 7.3×10^?3 cm^?2 sec^?1 str^?1 which agrees with the value of other investigators^1–9.     

Experimental consequences of flavor- and muon number-changing neutral currents in an SU(2) × U(1) gauge model with CP nonconservation

We enumerate a large number of experimental consequences, calculated in a model within the usual framework, of the assumption that weak neutral currents exist which do not conserve flavor, and, with a lepton-quark analogy, do not conserve muon number, at the level of strength of the CP-violating parameter. The estimates are relevant to a number of experiments in progress of planned, in particular those searching for the nonconservation of muon number at the level of about 10^?9.     

Solar diurnal anisotropy measured using muons in GRAPES-3 experiment in 2006

The GRAPES-3 experiment at Ooty contains a large-area (560 m²) tracking muon detector. This detector consists of 16 modules, each 35 m² in area, that are grouped into four supermodules of 140 m² each. The threshold energy of muons is sec(θ) GeV along a direction with zenith angle θ and the angular resolution of the muon detector is 6°. Typically, it records ~4×10⁹ muons every day. The muon detector has been operating uninterruptedly since 2001, thus providing a high statistics record of the cosmic ray flux as a function of time over one decade. However, prior to using these data, the muon rate has to be corrected for two important atmospheric effects, namely, variations in atmospheric pressure and temperature. Because of the near equatorial location of Ooty (11.4°N), the seasonal variations in the atmospheric temperature are relatively small and shall be ignored here. Due to proximity to the equator, the pressure changes at Ooty display a dominant 12 h periodic behaviour in addition to other seasonal changes. Here, we discuss various aspects of a novel method for accurate pressure measurement and subsequent corrections applied to the GRAPES-3 muon data to correct these pressure-induced variations. The pressure-corrected muon data are used to measure the profile of the solar diurnal anisotropy during 2006. The data, when divided into four segments, display significant variation both in the amplitude (~45%) and phase (~42 m) of the solar diurnal anisotropy during 2006, which was a period of relatively low solar activity.