English

Giant Atmospheric Showers Detected by the Yakutsk Extensive Air Shower Array

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-06-03 v1

Abstract

The two most powerful extensive air showers (EAS) with energies of about 102010^{20} eV, registered at the Yakutsk EAS array during the entire observation period of 1974-2024, are considered. Both showers hit the array near the center and triggered all surface detectors and underground muon detectors with a threshold energy of Eμ=1.0×cosθE_{\mu} = 1.0 \times \cos \theta GeV. These events have an abnormally high fraction of muons, which is beyond current model predictions. This may change our understanding of hadron interactions at ultra-high energy, but there is also a possibility that these showers were initiated by some exotic primary particles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.00517,
  title  = {Giant Atmospheric Showers Detected by the Yakutsk Extensive Air Shower Array},
  author = {A. V. Glushkov and K. G. Lebedev and L. T. Ksenofontov and A. V. Saburov and O. N. Ivanov and A. F. Boyakinov and A. A. Ivanov and S. P. Knurenko and A. D. Krasilnikov and S. V. Matarkin and V. P. Mokhnachevskaya and N. Ya. Muksunov and I. S. Petrov and I. E. Sleptsov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.00517},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures, will be published in Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Physics