MEASUREMENT OF BORON AND CARBON FLUXES IN COSMIC RAYS WITH THE PAMELA EXPERIMENT

Abstract

The propagation of cosmic rays inside our galaxy plays a fundamental role in\nshaping their injection spectra into those observed at Earth. One of the best\ntools to investigate this issue is the ratio of fluxes for secondary and\nprimary species. The boron-to-carbon (B/C) ratio, in particular, is a sensitive\nprobe to investigate propagation mechanisms. This paper presents new\nmeasurements of the absolute fluxes of boron and carbon nuclei, as well as the\nB/C ratio, from the PAMELA space experiment. The results span the range 0.44 -\n129 GeV/n in kinetic energy for data taken in the period July 2006 - March\n2008.\n