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Properties of a New Group of Cosmic Nuclei: Results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on Sodium, Aluminum, and Nitrogen

ContributorsAMS Collaboration
Published inPhysical Review Letters, vol. 127, no. 021101
Publication date2021
Abstract

We report the properties of sodium (Na) and aluminum (Al) cosmic rays in the rigidity range 2.15 GV to 3.0 TV based on 0.46 million sodium and 0.51 million aluminum nuclei collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment on the International Space Station. We found that Na and Al, together with nitrogen (N), belong to a distinct cosmic ray group. In this group, we observe that, similar to the N flux, both the Na flux and Al flux are well described by the sums of a primary cosmic ray component (proportional to the silicon flux) and a secondary cosmic ray component (proportional to the fluorine flux). The fraction of the primary component increases with rigidity for the N, Na, and Al fluxes and becomes dominant at the highest rigidities. The Na/Si and Al/Si abundance ratios at the source, 0.036±0.003 for Na/Si and 0.103±0.004 for Al/Si, are determined independent of cosmic ray propagation.

Keywords
  • Cosmic-rays
  • Cosmic-ray nuclei
  • Aluminum nuclei
  • Sodium nuclei
  • Cosmic-ray source abundance
  • Secondary cosmic rays
  • Primary cosmic rays
  • Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
  • AMS
  • International Space Station
  • Astroparticle physics
  • Galactic cosmic rays
Citation (ISO format)
AMS Collaboration. Properties of a New Group of Cosmic Nuclei: Results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on Sodium, Aluminum, and Nitrogen. In: Physical Review Letters, 2021, vol. 127, n° 021101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.021101
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Journal ISSN0031-9007
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