EXPERIMENTALLY GUIDED MONTE CARLO CALCULATIONS OF THE ATMOSPHERIC MUON FLUX FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS

Atmospheric muons are produced in the interactions of primary cosmic rays particle with Earth's atmosphere, mainly by the decay of pions and kaons generated in hadronic interactions. They decay further on in electrons and positrons and electron and muon neutrinos. Being the penetrating cosmic rays component, the muons manage to pass entirely the a tmosphere a nd can p ass even larger absorbers before they interact with the material at t he Earth's s urface, and du e to cosmogenic production of isotopes by atmospheric muons, information o f astrophysical, environmental and material research interest can be obtained. Up to now, mainly semi-analytical approximations have been used to calculate the muon flux for estimating the cosmogenic isotope production, necessary for different applications. Our estimation o f the a tmospheric muon flux is based on a Monte- Carlo simulation program CORSIKA, in which we simulate the development in the atmosphere of the extensive a ir showers, using different models for the description o f the hadronic interaction and taking into account the influence of the Earth's magnetic field. Such simulations are controlled b y the e xperimental results of the muon charge ratio, representing the ratio of positive to negative muon flux, obtained with WILLI detector in IFIN-HH Bucharest.The two advantages in a good estimation of muon flux by our method are due to the fact that CORSIKA code allows a correct description of all secondary interactions in the Earth's atmosphere and of all t rajectories of the particles in the geomagnetic field; besides this, such simulations can be checked with experimental data of muon charge ratio measured with WILLI detector.