Primary cosmic ray nucleon spectrum from sea-level muon spectrum and scaling hypothesis parameters

Abstract

Based on the measured sea-level muon energy spectrum and the fitted parameters of Feynman’s scaling hypothesis that describe high energy collisions, we have deduced the primary cosmic ray nucleon spectrum in the energy range 50 GeV < E < 5000 GeV. It is shown that the statistical errors in the resulting nucleon spectrum are among the lowest that exist now and any residual systematic uncertainties in the evaluated flux can be reduced further by using accurate high energy collision data of nucleons and pions in light nuclei at current accelerator energies.