The origin of the ankle

The differential intensity of cosmic radiation shows a sequence of depressions referred to as knees in a large energy band above 1015eV. The global depression entailed in the complete spectrum with respect to the extrapolated intensity based on low energy data, amounts to a maximum factor of 8, occurring at 5×1018eV, where flux measurements exhibit a relative minimum, referred to as the ankle. It is demonstrated by a full simulation of cosmic ray trajectories in the Galaxy that the intensity minimum around the ankle energy is primarily due to the nuclear interactions of the cosmic ions with the interstellar matter and to the galactic magnetic field. Ankles signal the onset energies of the rectilinear propagation in the Milky Way at Earth, being for example, 4×1018eV for helium and 6×1019eV for iron. The ankle, in spite of its notable importance at Earth, is a local perturbation of the universal spectrum which, between the knee and the ankle, decreases by a round factor 109 regaining its unperturbed status above 1019eV.