Tübingen 2003 – scientific programme
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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 42: Kern- und Teilchen-Astrophysik IV
HK 42.6: Talk
Thursday, March 20, 2003, 15:15–15:30, F
Experimental studies of the East - West effect of the charge ratio of atmospheric muons with energies relevant to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly — •Iliana Brancus1,2, Juergen Wentz1,2, Bogdan Mitrica1, Heinigerd Rebel2,3, Mirel Petcu1, Alexandru Bercuci1,2, Cristina Aiftimiei1, Marin Duma1, and Gabriel Toma1 — 1National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest, Roumania — 2Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institut fur Kernphysik, Karlsruhe, Germany — 3Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, University of Heidelberg, Germany
The charge ratio of atmospheric muons is a quantity sensitive to hadronic interactions of cosmic rays and to the influence of the geomagnetic field. Experimental information is of current interest for tuning models used for calculations of atmospheric neutrino fluxes. We report about experimental studies based on observation of the life time of the muons stopped in the absorber layers (aluminum support) of a detector WILLIconsisting of 16 plastic scintillator modules ( 90 x 90 cm2), surrounded by veto counters. The detector is mounted in a rotatable frame and installed in IFIN Bucharest (vertical geomagnetic cut-off rigigity of 5.6 GV). Measurements of the asymmetry of the muon charge ratio in East and West directions, observed with a mean zenith angle of 35o results in valuues of the relative asymmetry of the charge ratio in values decreasing from 0.25 to 0.20 in the muon momentum range 0.35- 0.50 GeV/c relevant to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly.