FAS Abstracts 2004 Meeting Page

Joint Meeting: Engineering & Physics and Space Sciences B (PSS): PSS-8

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Elemental and isotopic composition of galactic cosmic rays.  A. Farahat (1), M. Zhang (1), H. Rassoul (1), and J. Connell (2). (1) Dept. of Physics and Space Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL 32901. (2) The University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824. The composition of galactic cosmic rays differs from the galactic and the solar system compositions. This is because high energy cosmic rays nuclei interact with interstellar gas and produce secondary cosmic ray nuclei that are normally much less abundant in the average material of our galaxy or the solar system.  Cosmic ray propagation in the galaxy is the key to understand the cosmic ray composition. In this study we are utilizing the Markov stochastic processes to the computation of cosmic ray propagation through 3-dimensional galactic magnetic fields and interstellar medium.  We have examined the cosmic ray propagation path from their source to our solar system and what occur to the path length of these particles when it passes through the local bubble at the edge of our solar system or the high-density gas clouds in the interstellar space. The current results of this investigation will be presented, and the ongoing efforts to include the average galactic magnetic field structure to allow for different diffusion coefficients, parallel and perpendicular to the field, will be discussed.