1999/08/31 by A. Cillis, S. J. Sciutto, Sergio J Sciutto
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Air shower #Altitude (triangle) #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Atmospheric sciences #Cosmic ray #Earth's magnetic field #Environmental science #Field (mathematics) #Geodesy #Geology #Geometry #Geophysics #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Magnetic field #Mathematics #Meteorology #Observable #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Shower #Zenith #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0954-3899/26/3/309
16 pages, 9 figures. Corrected some typos
arxiv created 1999/09/02 · openalex publication_date 2000/02/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The influence of the geomagnetic field on the development of air showers is studied. The well known International Geomagnetic Reference Field was included in the AIRES air shower simulation program as an auxiliary tool to allow the calculation of very accurate estimations of the geomagnetic field given the geographic coordinates, altitude above sea level and date of a given event. Our simulations indicate that the geomagnetic deflections significantly alter some shower observables such as, for example, the lateral distribution of muons in the case of events with large zenith angles (larger than 75°). On the other hand, such alterations seem to be unimportant for smaller zenith angles. Global observables such as the total number of particles or longitudinal development parameters do not present appreciable dependences on the geomagnetic deflections for all the cases that were studied.