Related papers: Hadronic interaction models and the angular distri…
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…
Over the last two decades, various experiments have measured muon densities in extensive air showers over several orders of magnitude in primary energy. While some experiments observed differences in the muon densities between simulated and…
We present a method to test the impact of ad-hoc modifications of some of the generic parameters of hadronic interactions -- cross section, elasticity, and multiplicity -- on any observable quantity using full 3-dimensional simulations of…
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…
The hadron production in the simulation of extensive air showers is a long standing problem and the origin of large uncertainties in the reconstruction of the mass of the high energy primary cosmic rays. Hadronic interaction models re-tuned…
Cosmic rays interact with nuclei in the Earth's atmosphere to produce extensive air showers, which give rise to the atmospheric muon flux. Temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere influence the rate of muons measured in deep underground…
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…
The interpretation of extensive air shower (EAS) measurements is strongly dependent on the hadronic interaction models used for simulating reference showers. We study the importance of low-energy hadronic interactions in simulated air…
The study of hadronic showers, which are produced by cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere, is essential for shedding light on the origins and characteristics of high-energy particles originating from space and reaching our planet.…
The mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays can be studied from the distributions of the depth of shower maximum and/or the muon shower size. Here, we study the dependence of the mean muon shower size on the depth of shower…
Presently large systematic uncertainties remain in the description of hadronic interactions at ultra-high energies and a fully consistent description of air-shower experimental data is yet to be reached. The amount of data collected by the…
The geometric distribution of high-energy hadrons >100 GeV in shower cores measured with the KASCADE calorimeter is analyzed. The data are checked for sensitivity to hadronic interaction features and indications of new physics as discussed…
The bulk of air showers initiated by very high energy cosmic rays exhibits a longitudinal development in depth with a single well-defined shower maximum. However, a small fraction of showers has a profile that differs considerably from this…
Most cosmic-ray air shower arrays have focused on detecting electromagnetic shower particles and low energy muons. A few groups (most notably MACRO + EASTOP and SPASE + AMANDA) have studied the high energy muon component of showers.…
The origin and nature of ultra high energy cosmic rays remains being a mystery. However, great progress has been made in recent years due to the observations performed by the Pierre Auger Observatory and Telescope Array. In particular, it…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a hybrid detector for cosmic rays with E > 1EeV. From the gathered data we estimated the proton-proton cross-section at sqrt(s) = 55 TeV and tested other features of the hadronic interaction models, which use…
We consider multivariate skew-t distributions for modeling composition data of high energy cosmic rays. The model has been validated with simulated data for different primary nuclei and hadronic models focusing on the depth of maximum Xmax…
Lateral distributions for electrons and muons in extensive air showers measured with the array of the KASCADE experiment are compared to results of simulations based on the high-energy hadronic interaction models QGSJet and SIBYLL. It is…
The combined data of Fluorescence and Surface Detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory has recently provided the strongest constraints on the validity of predictions from current models of hadronic interactions. The unmodified predictions…
We study the role new gauge interactions in extensions of the standard model play in air showers initiated by ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Hadron-hadron events remain dominated by quantum chromodynamics, while projectiles and/or targets…