Was the cosmic ray burst detected by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope on 22 June 2015 caused by a transient weakening of the geomagnetic field or by an interplanetary anisotropy?

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope in Ooty, India had claimed detection of a 2 hour (h) high-energy ($\sim 20\mathrm{GeV}$) burst of galactic cosmic-rays (GCRs) through a $>50\sigma$ surge in GeV muons, was caused by reconnection of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) in the magnetosphere that led to transient weakening of Earth’s magnetic shield. This burst had occurred during a G4-class geomagnetic storm (storm) with a delay of $\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{h}$ relative to the coronal mass ejection (CME) of 22 June 2015 [P. K. Mohanty et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 171101 (2016)]. However, recently a group interpreted the occurrence of the same burst in a subset of 31 neutron monitors (NMs) to have been the result of an anisotropy in interplanetary space [P. Evenson et al., Proc. Sci., ICRC2017 (2017) 133] in contrast to the claim in P. K. Mohanty et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 171101 (2016)]. A new analysis of the GRAPES-3 data with a fine 10.6° angular segmentation shows the speculation of interplanetary anisotropy to be incorrect, and offers a possible explanation of the NM observations. The observed 28 minutes (min) delay of the burst relative to the CME can be explained by the movement of the reconnection front from the bow shock to the surface of Earth at an average speed of $35\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$, much lower than the CME speed of $700\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$. This measurement may provide a more accurate estimate of the start of the storm.

Figure 1

(a) 9 directions ($\mathrm{FOV}=2.3\mathrm{sr}$) used earlier [13]. (b) a new combination of 169 directions labeled 1 through 9 with an angular segmentation of 10.6° used here.

Figure 2

(a) Response of ten NMs with largest increase coincident with GRAPES-3 burst on 22 June 2015. Kp index of geomagnetic activity shown at bottom, (b) Response of 21 NMs with no coincident activity. Duration of GRAPES-3 burst indicated by ‘Gray’ shading.

Figure 3

Muon intensity variation in 9 directions observed by GRAPES-3 on 22 June 2015. Progressive shift of anisotropy “peak” is seen going from East to West (labeled 1 through 9). The shift in location of anisotropy “peaks” and “valleys” are marked by inclined dashed lines labeled “a,” and “b,” respectively.

Figure 4

Muon intensity variation observed by GRAPES-3 on 22 June 2015 in nine directions labeled “1” in East through to “9” in West. Monte Carlo simulation for each direction is shown by dotted lines.