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Results for “COSMIC PROTONS”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1962

Primary Cosmic Ray and Solar Protons II

During July and August 1961 the energy spectrum of primary cosmic ray protons was investigated in the energy range from 80 to 350 MeV. The observations were made in five high altitude balloon flights at geomagnetic latitudes lambda is greater than 73 degrees N. Solar flare and quiet day spectra were obtained. A comparison of the 1960 and 1961 results leads to the conclusions that, 1. A significant flux of low energy protons is continually present in the primary radiation in the years of high solar activity; 2. This flux decreases with the declining level of solar activity as the galactic cosmic ray flux increases, It is, therefore, suggested that it is of solar origin; 3. The time dependence of the observed proton flux suggests the following alternatives: a) The particles are produced or released more or less continuously by the sun and do not originate only in the large flare events; or b) The particles are produced in individual large solar flares and subsequently stored over long periods of time. This second alternative would require a new and as yet unknown storage mechanism with a characteristic time of about 30 or more days.

BALLOON FLIGHT↗
NASA NTRS1996

Prediction of LDEF exposure to the ionizing radiation environment

Predictions of the LDEF mission's trapped proton and electron and galactic cosmic ray proton exposures have been made using the currently accepted models with improved resolution near mission end and better modeling of solar cycle effects. An extension of previous calculations, to provide a more definitive description of the LDEF exposure to ionizing radiation, is represented by trapped proton and electron flux as a function of mission time, presented considering altitude and solar activity variation during the mission and the change in galactic cosmic ray proton flux over the mission. Modifications of the AP8MAX and AP8MIN fluence led to a reduction of fluence by 20%. A modified interpolation model developed by Daly and Evans resulted in 30% higher dose and activation levels, which better agreed with measured values than results predicted using the Vette model.

Flight Experiment↗
NASA NTRS1985

Electrons and cosmic ray produced protons in Saturn's inner magnetosphere

The Cerenkov detector on Pioneer 11 previously observed Crand protons above 600 MeV in Saturn's inner magnetosphere, mixed with a poorly understood background of energetic electrons. The electron count is separated from the proton counts and the first-order angular distributions are established for each species. To do this the theoretical relationships among the harmonic coefficients of the count rate is used as a function of spacecraft roll angle. The majority of the counts were electrons with energy above several MeV; i.e., with drift periods shorter than the satellite orbital resonance. The electrons have isotropic pitch angle distributions, and the protons pancake over most of the region between Mimas and the rings, although there is a small region of dumbbell proton distributions in the vicinity of Janus and epimetheus.

Northrop, T. G.↗
NASA NTRS1985

A model for the proton spectrum and cosmic ray anisotropy

The problem of the origin of the cosmic rays is still uncertain. As a theory, it should explain the support of particles and energy, the mechanism of acceleration and propagation as well as some important features obtained directly from cosmic ray experiments, such as the power spectrum and the knee. There are two kinds of models for interpreting the knee of the cosmic ray spectrum. One is the leaky box model. Another model suggests that the cut-off rigidity of the main sources causes the knee. The present paper studies the spectrum and the anisotropy of cosmic rays in an isotropic diffuse model with explosive discrete sources in an infinite galaxy.

Xu, C.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Electrons and Cosmic Ray Produced Protons in Saturn's Inner Magnetosphere

The Cerenkov detector on Pioneer 11 previously observed Crand protons above 600 MeV in Saturn's inner magnetosphere, mixed with a poorly understood background of energetic electrons. The electron count is separated from the proton counts and the first-order angular distributions are established for each species. To do this the theoretical relationships among the harmonic coefficients of the count rate is used as a function of spacecraft roll angle. The majority of the counts were electrons with energy above several MeV; i.e., with drift periods shorter than the satellite orbital resonance. The electrons have isotropic pitch angle distributions, and the protons pancake over most of the region between Nimas and the rings, although there is a small region of dumbbell proton distributions in the vicinity of Janus and Epimetheus.

Northrop, T. G.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Electrons and cosmic ray produced protons in Saturn's inner magnetosphere

The Cerenkov detector on Pioneer 11 previously observed Crand protons above 600 MeV in Saturn's inner magnetosphere, mixed with a poorly understood background of energetic electrons. The electron count is separated from the proton counts and the first-order angular distributions are established for each species. To do this the theoretical relationships among the harmonic coefficients of the count rate is used as a function of spacecraft roll angle. The majority of the counts were electrons with energy above several MeV; i.e., with drift periods shorter than the satellite orbital resonance. The electrons have isotropic pitch angle distributions, and the protons pancake over most of the region between Nimas and the rings, although there is a small region of dumbbell proton distributions in the vicinity of Janus and Epimetheus.

Northrop, T. G.↗
DOE OSTI2014

DISCOVERY OF THE HARD SPECTRUM VHE γ-RAY SOURCE HESS J1641–463

This Letter reports the discovery of a remarkably hard spectrum source, HESS J1641–463, by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in the very high energy (VHE) domain. HESS J1641–463 remained unnoticed by the usual analysis techniques due to confusion with the bright nearby source HESS J1640–465. It emerged at a significance level of 8.5 standard deviations after restricting the analysis to events with energies above 4 TeV. It shows a moderate flux level of φ(E>1 TeV) = (3.64 ± 0.44{sub stat} ± 0.73{sub sys}) × 10{sup –13} cm{sup –2} s{sup –1}, corresponding to 1.8% of the Crab Nebula flux above the same energy, and a hard spectrum with a photon index of Γ = 2.07 ± 0.11{sub stat} ± 0.20{sub sys}. It is a point-like source, although an extension up to a Gaussian width of σ = 3 arcmin cannot be discounted due to uncertainties in the H.E.S.S. point-spread function. The VHE γ-ray flux of HESS J1641–463 is found to be constant over the observed period when checking time binnings from the year-by-year to the 28 minute exposure timescales. HESS J1641–463 is positionally coincident with the radio supernova remnant SNR G338.5+0.1. No X-ray candidate stands out as a clear association; however, Chandra and XMM-Newton data reveal some potential weak counterparts. Various VHE γ-ray production scenarios are discussed. If the emission from HESS J1641–463 is produced by cosmic ray protons colliding with the ambient gas, then their spectrum must extend close to 1 PeV. This object may represent a source population contributing significantly to the galactic cosmic ray flux around the knee.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1976

Cosmic ray interactions with lunar materials - Nature and composition of species formed

The paper discusses the effect of cosmic-ray proton interactions with lunar material, the nature and composition of the species resulting from these interactions, and the contribution of these species to the lunar atmosphere. It is shown that hydrogen atoms resulting from cosmic-ray proton neutralization escape into the atmosphere mostly as H2, that only a small fraction of the very small amount of OH and H2O produced by cosmic-ray protons escapes into the atmosphere, and that cosmic-ray protons play a very minor role, as compared with solar-wind protons, in producing lunar atmospheric hydrogen and hydrogenated species. It is concluded that the atmospheric contributions of H2, H, OH, and H2O produced by cosmic-ray protons are about three orders of magnitude less than those due to solar-wind protons.

Mukherjee, N. R.↗
NASA NTRS1975

The study of cosmic rays on the proton artificial earth satellite

Investigations were carried out with the space stations of the Proton series to study the physics of cosmic rays. The SEZ-13 device for the search of particles with a fractional electrical charge and the SEZ-11 device for the measurement of high energy electrons were mounted on the Proton-3 satellite. The mode of action of the SEZ-11 device differed from that of the SEZ-12 device used in the Proton-1 and Proton-2 satellites for similar purposes. Some of the results that were obtained are presented.

Grigorov, N. L.↗
DOE OSTI2013

UHECR ESCAPE MECHANISMS FOR PROTONS AND NEUTRONS FROM GAMMA-RAY BURSTS, AND THE COSMIC-RAY-NEUTRINO CONNECTION

The paradigm that gamma-ray burst fireballs are the sources of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is being probed by neutrino observations. Very stringent bounds can be obtained from the cosmic-ray (proton)-neutrino connection, assuming that the UHECRs escape as neutrons. In this study, we identify three different regimes as a function of the fireball parameters: the standard ''one neutrino per cosmic ray'' case, the optically thick (to neutron escape) case, and the case where leakage of protons from the boundaries of the shells (direct escape) dominates. In the optically thick regime, the photomeson production is very efficient, and more neutrinos will be emitted per cosmic ray than in the standard case, whereas in the direct escape-dominated regime, more cosmic rays than neutrinos will be emitted. We demonstrate that, for efficient proton acceleration, which is required to describe the observed UHECR spectrum, the standard case only applies to a very narrow region of the fireball parameter space. We illustrate with several observed examples that conclusions on the cosmic-ray-neutrino connection will depend on the actual burst parameters. We also show that the definition of the pion production efficiency currently used by the IceCube collaboration underestimates the neutrino production in the optically thick case. Finally, we point out that the direct escape component leads to a spectral break in the cosmic-ray spectrum emitted from a single source. The resulting ''two-component model'' can be used to even more strongly pronounce the spectral features of the observed UHECR spectrum than the dip model.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

PROSPECTS FOR DETECTION OF SYNCHROTRON EMISSION FROM SECONDARY ELECTRONS AND POSITRONS IN STARLESS CORES: APPLICATION TO G0.216+0.016

We investigate the diffusion of cosmic rays into molecular cloud complexes. Using the cosmic-ray diffusion formalism of Protheroe et al., we examine how cosmic rays diffuse into clouds exhibiting different density structures, including a smoothed step-function, as well as Gaussian and inverse-r density distributions, which are well known to trace the structure of star-forming regions. These density distributions were modeled as an approximation to the Galactic center cloud G0.216+0.016, a recently discovered massive dust clump that exhibits limited signs of massive star formation and thus may be the best region in the Galaxy to observe synchrotron emission from secondary electrons and positrons. Examination of the resulting synchrotron emission, produced by the interaction of cosmic-ray protons interacting with ambient molecular matter producing secondary electrons and positrons reveals that, due to projection effects, limb-brightened morphology results in all cases. However, we find that the Gaussian and inverse-r density distributions show much broader flux density distributions than step-function distributions. Significantly, some of the compact (compared to the 2.''2 resolution, 5.3 GHz Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) observations) sources show non-thermal emission, which may potentially be explained by the density structure and the lack of diffusion of cosmic rays into the cloud. We find that we can match the 5.3 and 20 GHz flux densities of the non-thermal source JVLA 1 and 6 from Rodríguez and Zapata with a local cosmic-ray flux density, a diffusion coefficient suppression factor of χ = 0.1-0.01 for a coefficient of 3 × 10{sup 27} cm{sup –2} s{sup –1}, and a magnetic field strength of 470 μG.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗