THE PRODUCTION OF LOW ENERGY MUONS BY NEUTRAL COMPONENTS OF THE COSMIC RADIATION AT SEA LEVEL.

An investigation of reactions at sea level produced by neutral components of the cosmic radiation which result in at least one muon of either sign and with energy lying between a few tens and a few hundreds of Mev. Reactions produced by incident neutrons via pion production and decay and by gamma radiation are observed and measured in the course of the work. A component of the total production process has been observed which seems to be inconsistent with either the neutron or gamma production mode. It is, apparently, strongly correlated with sidereal time and goes via the single negative muon channel only. The value of incident flux times cross section per target nucleon is about 3 x 10 to the -33rd power per second per steradian. The charge ratio negative muonpositive muon of the muons produced is about 1.15 for a 50 confidence interval obtained from 76 events collected in 2,475 hours of run time and where these 76 events include single negative pion production and in-flight decay events as well. Author