High-energy cosmic-ray muons at ground level and below ground level

Abstract

Sea-level muon spectrum predictions for the vertical and greatly inclined directions have been derived from recently developed rigorous calculations by Maeda and also by Cantrell by means of both energy-independent and energy-dependent hadron-nucleus inelastic crosssections. Most recently observed ground-level muon spectra are found to be adequately described as arising from decay process of pions and kaons produced in hadron collisions. Significant differences that can be distinguished by the existing cosmic-ray muon measurements are not expected to arise between muon spectra derived from conventional models and those from the use of Feynman's predictions about the scaling behaviour of very-high-energy hadron collisions. Included in the analysis there are some conclusions from previous works to show that there is a lack of agreement among them and with the present results.