Composition of Cosmic-Ray Nuclei at High Energies

Abstract

We have measured the charge composition of cosmic-ray nuclei from Li to Fe with energies up to about 100 GeV/nucleon. A balloon-borne counter telescope with gas Cherenkov counters for energy determination was used for this experiment. Our first results show that, in contrast to low-energy observations, the relative abundances change as a function of energy. We find that the ratio of the galactic secondary nuclei to primary-source nuclei decreases at energies above about 30 GeV/nucleon.