Modeling of rigidity dependent CORSIKA simulations for GRAPES-3

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope located in Ooty, India records 4 × 10⁹ muons daily. These muons are produced by interaction of primary cosmic rays (PCRs) in the atmosphere. The high statistics of muons enables GRAPES-3 to make precise measurement of various sun-induced phenomenon including coronal mass ejections (CME), Forbush decreases, geomagnetic storms (GMS) and atmosphere acceleration during the overhead passage of thunderclouds. However, the understanding and interpretation of observed data requires Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of PCRs and subsequent development of showers in the atmosphere. CORSIKA is a standard MC simulation code widely used for this purpose. However, these simulations are time consuming as large number of interactions and decays need to be taken into account at various stages of shower development from top of the atmosphere down to ground level. Therefore, computing resources become an important consideration particularly when billion of PCRs need to be simulated to match the high statistical accuracy of the data. During the GRAPES-3 simulations, it was observed that over 60% of simulated events don't really reach the Earth's atmosphere. The geomagnetic field (GMF) creates a threshold to PCRs called cutoff rigidity R_c, a direction dependent parameter below which PCRs can't reach the Earth's atmosphere. However, in CORSIKA there is no provision to set a direction dependent threshold. We have devised an efficient method that has taken into account of this R_c dependence. A reduction by a factor ∼3 in simulation time and ∼2 in output data size was achieved for GRAPES-3 simulations. This has been incorporated in CORSIKA version v75600 onwards. Detailed implementation of this along the potential benefits are discussed in this work.