Abstract
We now turn to perhaps the most fascinating topic of the energetic particle subject—the anomalous cosmic rays (ACR). The anomalous cosmic rays were discovered in 1973 (Garcia-Munoz et al. 1973). They carefully chose to study the period May-July, 1972 when the Sun was quiet and their measurements were the detection of H and He. As more data became available it was observed (Garcia-Munoz et al. 1975) that the differential energy spectra varied significantly with time, as shown in Fig. 8.1. Surprisingly, in 1972, below ∼ 30 MeV/nuc, the intensity of He was above that of H. It took many years before we had a satisfactory explanation of the source of the ACR, their elemental composition and the mechanism through which they become accelerated. We shall now outline some of the observations which contributed to the mystery.
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Simnett, G.M. (2017). The Anomalous Cosmic Rays. In: Energetic Particles in the Heliosphere. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 438. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43495-7_8
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