Related papers: Cosmic ray air showers from sphalerons
Extensive air showers are the result of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic rays at ultra-high energy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the fine details of hadronic…
Extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays are sensitive to the details of hadronic interactions models, so we present the main results obtained using the data of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The depth at which the…
The hybrid design of the Pierre Auger Observatory allows for the measurement of a number of properties of extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays. By comparing these measurements to predictions from air shower…
We discuss particle production in the high-energy, small-x limit of QCD where the gluon density of hadrons is expected to become nonperturbatively large. Strong modifications of the phase-space distribution of produced particles as compared…
Hadronic interaction models at cosmic ray (CR) energies are inherently uncertain due to the lack of a fundamental theoretical description of soft hadronic and nuclear interactions and the large extrapolation required from collider energies…
Cosmic ray data may allow the determination of the proton-air cross section at ultra-high energy. For example, the distribution of the first interaction point in air showers reflects the particle production cross section. As it is not…
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…
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…
High-energy cosmic rays are observed indirectly by detecting the extensive air showers initiated in Earth's atmosphere. The interpretation of these observations relies on accurate models of air shower physics, which is a challenge and an…
Decays of mesons produced in cosmic ray induced air showers in Earth's atmosphere can lead to a flux of light exotic particles which can be detected in underground experiments. We evaluate the energy spectra of the light neutral mesons…
Indications of a discrepancy between simulations and data on the number of muons in cosmic ray showers exist over a large span of energies. We focus on the excess of multi-muon bundles observed by the DELPHI detector at LEP and on the…
The characteristics of extensive air showers are sensitive to the details of hadronic interactions at energies and in kinematic regions beyond those tested by human-made accelerators. Uncertainties on extrapolations of the hadronic…
The properties of cosmic rays with energies above 1PeV have to be deduced from the spacetime structure and particle content of the air showers which they initiate. In this review, a summary of the phenomenology of these giant air showers is…
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…
The properties of cosmic rays with energies above 10**6 GeV have to be deduced from the spacetime structure and particle content of the air showers which they initiate. In this review we summarize the phenomenology of these giant air…
We discuss that hadron-induced atmospheric air showers from ultra-high energy cosmic rays are sensitive to QCD interactions at very small momentum fractions x where nonlinear effects should become important. The leading partons from the…
Sphaleron is a non-perturbative solution of electroweak gauge theories, which is crucially important for the scenario of electroweak baryogenesis. The sphaleron energy depends on details of the mechanism for the electroweak symmetry…
We investigate the detection of exotic massive strongly interacting hadrons (uhecrons) in ultra high energy cosmic ray telescopes. The conclusion is that experiments such as the Pierre Auger Observatory have the potential to detect these…
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…
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first we want to introduce a new type of hadronic interaction model (NEXUS), which has a much more solid theoretical basis as, for example, presently used models like QGSJET and VENUS, and ensures…