Effects of considering nuclear interactions between the UHCRE sample and the experimental setup on the observed cosmic ray abundances for Z ≥ 74

Abstract

A recently published charge spectrum derived from a sample of cosmic ray nuclei with Z ≥ 74 collected by the Ultra Heavy Cosmic Ray Experiment (a satellite-borne experiment which employed a large array of solid state nuclear track detectors) is propagated outside the experimental setup. This propagation is carried out by computing cross sections for nuclear interactions between cosmic ray nuclei and the experimental setup from emprical values and semiempirical models. The effect that this propagation has upon the relative abundance between different groups of charge is studied. The value of the corrections derived from this propagation is found to be similar to that of the statistical errors.