Related papers: Anomalous Longitudinal Shower Profiles and Hadroni…
The longitudinal profile of extensive air showers is sensitive to the energy and type/mass of the primary particle. One of its characteristics, the atmospheric depth of shower maximum, is often used to reconstruct the elemental composition…
We demonstrate that a substantial part of the present uncertainties in model predictions for the average maximum depth of cosmic ray-induced extensive air showers is related to very high energy pion-air collisions. Our analysis shows that…
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…
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)…
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…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are almost exclusively detected through extensive air showers, which they initiate upon interaction with the atmosphere. The longitudinal development of these air showers can be directly observed using…
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…
A comparative study of commonly used hadronic collision simulation packages is presented. The characteristics of the products of hadron-nucleus collisions are analyzed from a general perspective, but focusing on their correlation with…
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.…
We report on a study about some characteristics of muon production during the development of extended air showers initiated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Using simulations with the recent new version of the AIRES air shower simulation…
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…
The characteristics of an extensive air shower derive from both the mass of the primary ultra-high-energy cosmic ray that seeds its development and the properties of the hadronic interactions that feed it. With its hybrid detector design,…
In models based on large extra dimensions where massive spin 2 exchange can dominate at high energies, the neutrino-proton cross section can rise to typical hadronic values at energies above 10^20 eV. The neutrino then becomes a candidate…
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…
Air showers, produced by the interaction of energetic cosmic rays with the atmosphere, are an excellent alternative to study particle physics at energies beyond any human-made particle accelerator. For that, it is necessary to identify…
In this paper the longitudinal profile of muon production along the shower axis is studied. The characteristics of this distribution is investigated for different primary masses, zenith angles, primary energies, and different high energy…
Muons serve as the best probes of the physics of hadronic interactions in the upper atmosphere because of their simple physics. All the properties of detected muons, such as their energy and angle of incidence, are governed by the…
The mechanism of hadronic interactions at very high energies is still unclear. Available accelerator data constrain weakly the forward rapidity region which determines the development of atmospheric showers. This ignorance is one of the…
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…
We propose a method to extract high-energy hadronic interaction properties from the distributions of two of the main observables of proton extensive air showers: the depth of maximum shower development, $X_\mathrm{max}$, and the number of…