Related papers: Proton-Air Cross Section and Extensive Air Showers
The interaction of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with air nuclei triggers extensive air showers that reach their maximal energy deposition at the atmospheric depth $X_{\max}$. The distribution of this shower observable encodes information…
We describe the general aspects of Monte Carlo Collision Generators suitable for cosmic ray nucleon-Air and nuclei-Air interactions, including accelerator and collider data. The problem of the extrapolation at 3 energy decades above the LHC…
The proton-air cross section in the energy range 1-100 TeV has been measured by the ARGO-YBJ cosmic ray experiment. The analysis is based on the flux attenuation for different atmospheric depths (i.e. zenith angles) and exploits the…
Old models of the scattering of composite systems based on the Glauber model of multiple diffraction are applied to hadron-nucleus scattering. We obtain an excellent fit with only two free parameters to the highest energy hadron-nucleus…
We present a fast one dimensional hybrid method to efficiently simulate extensive air showers up to the highest observed energies. Based on precalculated pion showers and a bootstrap technique, our method predicts the average shower…
We develop a potential algorithm to relate the depth development of ultra high energy extensive air showers and the time delay for individual muons. The time distributions sampled at different positions at ground level by a large air shower…
The relation of model predictions for muon content of extensive air showers (EAS) to particular properties of hadron-air interactions is discussed. Further, using a new Monte Carlo generator of cosmic ray interactions, QGSb, the relevance…
An important approach to studying high-energy cosmic rays is the investigation of the properties of extensive air showers; however, the lateral distribution of particles in simulations of such showers strongly depends on the applied model…
Several models of minimum-bias hadronic interactions at ultra-high energy that have been used for calculations of air showers share essential common features. In this talk I review these common elements and discuss some consequences. I…
Using a large set of simulated extensive air showers, we investigate universality features of electron and positron distributions in very-high-energy cosmic-ray air showers. Most particle distributions depend only on the depth of the shower…
Predictions of the hadronic interaction model EPOS~1.61 as implemented in the air shower simulation program CORSIKA are compared to observations with the KASCADE experiment. The investigations reveal that the predictions of EPOS are not…
Extensive Air Showers are still the only source of information on primary cosmic rays and their interactions at energies above PeV. However, this information is hidden inside the multiplicative character of the cascading process. Inspite of…
In this work we argue that, in the interpretation of the energy dependence of the depth of the shower maximum and of the muon content in high energy cosmic ray showers ($E > 10^{17}$ eV), other variables besides the composition may play an…
In this article we identify the key elements that govern the propagation of muons from the production in extensive air showers to ground. We describe a model based on simple assumptions that propagates the muons starting from the few…
The hardness of the energy spectrum of neutral pions produced in proton-air interactions at ultra-high energies, above $10^{18}$ eV, is constrained by the steepness of the shower-to-shower distribution of the number of muons in…
Multiple partonic interactions are widely used to simulate the hadronic final state in high energy hadronic collisions, and successfully describe many features of the data. It is important to make maximum use of the available physical…
We discuss the electromagnetic collisions of high energy protons, pions and kaons with atmospheric nuclei. In particular, we use the equivalent photon approximation to estimate (i) the diffractive collisions where the projectile scatters…
Extensive Air Showers are complex macroscopic objects initiated by single ultra-high energy particles. They are the result of millions of high energy reactions in the atmosphere and can be described as the superposition of hadronic and…
Primary proton-air interactions at ultra-high energies leave a physically interpretable imprint on the correlated fluctuations of the depth of shower maximum and the muon content in extensive air showers. This imprint reflects the…
Interpretation of extensive air showers (EAS) experiments results is strongly based on air shower simulations. The latter being based on hadronic interaction models, any new model can help for the understanding of the nature of cosmic rays.…