Related papers: Anomalous Longitudinal Shower Profiles and Hadroni…
The current status and prospects of deducing the proton-air cross section from fluorescence telescope measurements of extensive air showers are discussed. As it is not possible to observe the point of first interaction, $X_ {\rm 1}$,…
An analysis of the influence of the Landau-Migdal-Pomeranchuck (LPM) effect on the development of air showers initiated by astroparticles, is presented. By means of computer simulations using algorithms that emulate Migdal's theory,…
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…
Experimental observations of extensive air showers have revealed an excess of the muon content with respect to their theoretical simulations, which we refer to as the muon puzzle. This muon puzzle hampers a precise determination of the…
The first interactions of photon-induced showers are of electromagnetic nature, and the transfer of energy to the hadron/muon channel is reduced with respect to the bulk of hadron-induced showers. This results in a lower number of secondary…
The recent observations of muon charge ratio up to about 10 TeV and of atmospheric neutrinos up to energies of about 400 TeV has triggered a renewed interest into the high-energy interaction models and cosmic ray primary composition. A…
Extensive air showers, induced by high energy cosmic rays impinging on the Earth's atmosphere, produce radio emission that is measured with the LOFAR radio telescope. As the emission comes from a finite distance of a few kilometers, the…
Cosmic rays from outer space enter the atmosphere with energies of up to 10^{11} GeV. The initial particle or a secondary hadron inside the shower may then interact with an air nucleon to produce nonstandard particles. In this article we…
The technique of adjoint cascade equations has been applied to calculate the properties of extremely high energy gamma-rays in the energy range 10^18--10^22 eV with taking into account the LPM effect and interactions of gamma-rays with the…
The energy spectrum of muons at ground level in air showers are studied and a new observable is proposed to constrain hadronic interaction models used in air shower simulations. An asymmetric Gaussian function is proposed to describe the…
The role of Horizontal Showers induced by cosmic rays is discussed in detail. A new approach to the calculation of the muon component in horizontal air showers induced by protons, heavier nuclei or photons is presented which allows a simple…
We introduce a simple branching model for the development of hadronic showers in the Earth's atmosphere. Based on this model, we show how the size of the pionic component followed by muons can be estimated. Several aspects of the subsequent…
Extensive air showers produced by the interaction of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays ($E > 10^{18}$ eV) in the Earth's atmosphere provide a challenging yet unique channel to probe hadronic interactions at the 100 TeV center-of-mass energy…
We developed a radio interferometric technique for the observation of extensive air showers initiated by cosmic particles. In this proof-of-principle study we show that properties of extensive air showers can be derived with high accuracy…
Measurements of the Elongation Rate of the depth of shower maximum above 1 EeV are reviewed. There is evidence, from four independent estimates of this rate, made in the two hemispheres using three different techniques, for a decrease in…
Large scale airshower simulations around the GZK cutoff are performed. An extensive analysis of the behaviour of the various subcomponents of the cascade is presented. We focus our investigation both on the study of total and partial…
The Heitler-Matthews model for hadronic air showers will be extended to all the generations of electromagnetic subshowers in the hadronic cascade. The analysis is outlined in detail for showers initiated by primary protons. For showers…
In extensive air shower experiments, the number of muons crossing a detector at a given position, as well as their arrival time, arrival direction, and energy, are determined by a more fundamental 3-dimensional distribution linked to the…
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…
The burst of radio emission by the extensive air shower provides a promising alternative for detecting ultra-high energy cosmic rays.We have developed an independent numerical program to simulate these radio signals. Our code is based on a…