Related papers: Systematic uncertainties in air shower measurement…
The predictions of hadronic interaction models for cosmic-ray induced air showers contain inherent uncertainties due to limitations of available accelerator data and theoretical understanding in the required energy and rapidity regime.…
Studies of the influence of different hadronic models on extensive air showers at ultra-high energies are presented. The hadronic models considered are those implemented in the well-known QGSJET and SIBYLL event generators. The different…
General physics of very high energy hadronic interactions is discussed. Special attention is payed to the contribution of semihard processes to the interaction dynamics and to the role of parton shadowing and parton density saturation. In…
In the sub-TeV regime, the most widely used hadronic interaction models disagree significant lying their predictions for post-first interaction and ground-level particle spectra from cosmic ray induced air showers. These differences…
At high energy, cosmic rays can only be studied by measuring the extensive air showers they produce in the atmosphere of the Earth. Although the main features of air showers can be understood within a simple model of successive…
Air shower simulation programs are essential tools for the analysis of data from cosmic ray experiments and for planning the layout of new detectors. They are used to estimate the energy and mass of the primary particle. Unfortunately the…
Extensive air showers are complex objects, resulting of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic ray at ultra-high-energy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the details of…
The physics content of the QGSJET-III Monte Carlo generator of high energy hadronic collisions is discussed. New theoretical approaches implemented in QGSJET-III are addressed in some detail and a comparison to alternative treatments of…
In the sub-TeV regime, the most widely used hadronic interaction models disagree significantly in their predictions of particle spectra from cosmic ray induced air showers. We investigate the nature and impact of model uncertainties,…
The description of high-energy hadronic interactions plays an important role in the (astrophysical) interpretation of air shower data. The parameter space important for the development of air showers (energy and kinematical range) extends…
The physics content of the QGSJET-III Monte Carlo model of high energy hadronic interactions is briefly described. The predictions of the model for extensive air shower characteristics are presented in comparison to the corresponding…
The hadronization procedure of the QGSJET-III Monte Carlo (MC) generator of high energy hadronic interactions is discussed. Selected results of the model, regarding production spectra of secondary particles, are presented in comparison to…
Ultrahigh energy cosmic ray air showers probe particle physics at energies beyond the reach of accelerators. Here we introduce a new method to test hadronic interaction models without relying on the absolute energy calibration, and apply it…
Since a number of years the QGSJET model has been successfully used by different groups in the field of high energy cosmic rays. Current work is devoted to the first general update of the model. The key improvement is connected to an…
High-energy cosmic rays interact in the Earth's atmosphere and produce extensive air showers (EASs) which can be measured with large detector arrays at the ground. The interpretation of these measurements relies on models of the EAS…
Inelastic pp collisions are dominated by soft (low momentum transfer) physics where perturbative QCD cannot be fully applied. A deep understanding of both soft and semi-hard processes is crucial for predictions of minimum bias and…
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…
We study the dependence of extensive air shower development on the first hadronic interactions at ultra-high energies occurring in the startup phase of the air shower cascade. The interpretation of standard air shower observables depends on…
When high-energy cosmic rays (gamma's, protons, or heavy nuclei) impinge onto the Earth's atmosphere, they interact at high altitude with the air nuclei as targets. By repeated interaction of the secondaries an `extensive air shower' (EAS)…
KASCADE-Grande, the extension of the multi-detector setup of KASCADE, was devoted to measure the properties of extensive air showers initiated by high-energy cosmic rays in the primary energy range of 1 PeV up to 1 EeV. The observations of…