Determination of electron production rates caused by cosmic ray particles in ionospheres of terrestrial planets Original Research Article

Cosmic rays (CR) create the lower parts of planetary ionospheres. The observed CR spectrum can be distributed into the following five intervals: I (E = 3.106 — 1011 GeV/n), II (E = 3.102 — 3.106 GeV/n), III (E = 30 MeV/n — 3.102GeV/n), IV (E = 1 — 30 MeV/n) and V (E = 10 KeV/n — 1 MeV/n), where E is the kinetic energy of the particles (Dorman, 1977; Velinov, 2000). Some methods exist for calculating ionization by relativistic particles in CR intervals I, II and III. For the high latitude and polar ionosphere, however, intervals III, IV and V are also significant since they contain solar cosmic ray and anomalous cosmic ray components. Formulas for the electron production rate q (cm−3s−1) at height h in the planetary ionosphere as a result of penetration of energetic particles from intervals III, IV and V are deduced in this paper. For this purpose the law of particle energy transformation by penetration through the ionosphere — atmosphere system is obtained. A model for the calculation of the cosmic ray spectrum on the basis of satellite measurements is created. This computed analytical model gives a practical possibility for investigation of experimental data from measurements of galactic cosmic rays and their anomalous component.