The model-independence of cosmic ray source determinations

The direct inversion method of Margolis is used to explore the dependence of Z less than or equal to 28 source abundance determinations on the choice of the pathlength distribution. The source abundances do not depend strongly on the form of the truncation used, although some truncation at the lower energies (compared to a leaky box) is necessary. The decrease of mean grammage with increasing energy is required by the observations. The effects of errors and he use of other secondary to primary ratios is discussed.