Estimated equivalent radiation dose at different altitudes in Earth’s atmosphere

Abstract

The paper reports the results of simulation of cosmic ray proton transport through Earth’s atmosphere. The main objective of this work is to obtain characteristics of secondary particle fluxes at different altitudes and to convert them to equivalent dose values. The technique for the conversion is based on numerical simulation of interaction between the particles and an anthropomorphic phantom. The paper examines two cases, using a model source of primary proton spectra as input parameters, which correspond to both purely galactic cosmic rays and solar cosmic rays. The computational results are tabulated for the altitude range from 0 km to 11 km above sea level; the upper range value corresponds to the flight altitude of civilian airliners. These results are shown to agree well with the results obtained by other research teams.

Keywords

• cosmic rays
• astrophysics
• monte carlo method
• geant4
• particle physics
• numerical simulation