Muon production and string percolation effects in cosmic rays at the highest energies
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2012-10-01 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Abstract
Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays with energies above ~ 10^18 eV provide an unique window to study hadronic interactions at energies well above those achieved in the largest man-made accelerators. We argue that at those energies string percolation may occur and play an important role on the description of the induced Extensive Air Showers by enhancing strangeness and baryon production. This leads to a significant increase of the muon content of the cascade in agreement with recent data collected at UHECR experiments. In this work, the effects of string percolation in hadronic interactions are implemented in an EAS code and their impact on several shower observables is evaluated and discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.6474,
title = {Muon production and string percolation effects in cosmic rays at the highest energies},
author = {J. Alvarez-Muñiz and L. Cazon and R. Conceição and J. Dias de Deus and C. Pajares and M. Pimenta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.6474},
year = {2012}
}