Estudos de um sistema experimental para observação de píons cósmicos ao nível do mar através de simulações

Abstract

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from space, primarily protons, which produce showers of secondary particles when interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere. These showers can be divided into three components: electromagnetic (e±, γ), hadronic (n, p, π±, π0, among others), and muonic (μ±). Muons are the most abundant high-energy particles at sea level, with a flux of approximately one particle per square centimeter per minute. Most of them are products of the decay of pions (π±) that have a short lifetime (26 ns) and low flux at sea level. For this reason and practical purposes, pions are not as interesting as muons, and most atmospheric pions’ direct measurements are more than 40 years old. In particular, there are no records of measurements made in Brazil. In this work, we present a study of a small experimental setup to identify pions using simulations. The main objective is to design a setup to measure the flux of pions in specific energy ranges. A GEANT4 simulation code, including scintillators, photomultiplier, absorber materials, and relevant physical processes, was built. The efficiency and acceptance of the candidate system as a function of pion energy are estimated. Improvements are also discussed.