The path of a secondary cosmic-ray charged particle in the earth's magnetic field

Abstract

An analysis is made of the paths of secondary high energy charged particles ejected from the earth's atmosphere by primary cosmic-ray photons. This leads to the following conclusions. (1) As has generally been assumed the decrease in ionization in equatorial regions is much larger than can be explained by the deflection by the earth's magnetic field of the secondaries formed in the earth's atmosphere. (2) The observed east-west dissymmetry of Geiger tube counts can be explained by the deflection of secondaries formed in the earth's atmosphere provided an appropriate value of Q, the excess of positives over negatives, may be assumed. The small amount of the observed dissymmetry at high latitudes however sets so low an upper limit on Q that this mechanism appears to be inadequate to explain all of the observed dissymmetry at low latitudes.