Production rates of cosmogenic nuclei on the lunar surface

A physical model for Geant4-based simulation of the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) particles' interaction with the lunar surface matter has been developed to investigate the production rates of cosmogenic nuclei. In this model the GCRs, mainly very high energy protons and α particles, bombard the surface of the Moon and produce many secondary particles, such as protons and neutrons. The energies of protons and neutrons at different depths are recorded and saved as ROOT files, and the analytical expressions for the differential proton and neutron fluxes are obtained through the best-fit procedure using ROOT software. To test the validity of this model, we calculate the production rates of the long-lived nuclei ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al in the Apollo 15 long drill core by combining the above differential fluxes and the newly evaluated spallation reaction cross sections. Our numerical results show that the theoretical production rates agree quite well with the measured data, which means that this model works well. Therefore, it can be expected that this model can be used to investigate the cosmogenic nuclei in future lunar samples returned by the Chinese lunar exploration program and can be extended to study other objects, such as meteorites and the Earth's atmosphere. (authors)