Study of low energy hadronic interaction models based on BESS observed cosmic ray proton and antiproton spectra at medium high altitude

Abstract

We study low energy hadronic interaction models based on BESS observed cosmic ray proton and antiproton spectra at medium high altitude. Among the three popular low energy interaction models, we find that FLUKA reproduces the results of BESS observations on the secondary proton spectrum reasonably well over the whole observed energy range, the model UrQMD works well at relatively higher energies, whereas the spectrum obtained with GHEISHA differs significantly from the measured spectrum. The simulated antiproton spectrum with FLUKA, however, exhibits significant deviation from the BESS observation whereas UrQMD and GHEISHA reproduce the BESS observations within experimental error.