Related papers: Air showers, hadronic models, and muon production
Motivated by the excess of the muon content of cosmic ray induced extensive air showers (EAS), relative to EAS modeling, observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory, and by the tension between Auger data and air shower simulations on the…
The indirect ground-based observations of cosmic rays through extensive air showers in modern experiments typically involve the use of Monte Carlo simulations to determine the characteristics of the primary particles. These simulations…
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 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…
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 AIRES (AIR-shower Extended Simulations) system is a set of programs and subroutines to realistically simulate particle showers produced after the incidence of high energy cosmic rays on the Earth's atmosphere, and to manage all the…
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…
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,…
Studies of the nature of cosmic ray particles at the highest energies are based on the measurement of extensive air showers. Most cosmic ray properties can therefore only be obtained from the interpretation of air shower data and are thus…
Current simulations of air showers produced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) do not satisfactorily describe recent experimental data, particularly when looking at the muonic shower component relative to the electromagnetic one.…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are often characterized indirectly by analyzing the properties of secondary cosmic ray particles produced in the collisions with air nuclei. The particle number $N_\mu$ of muon and the depth of shower maximum…
We present a meta-analysis of recent muon density measurements made by eight air shower experiments which cover shower energies ranging from PeV to tens of EeV regarding the muon puzzle in extensive air showers. Some experimental analyses…
Interpretation of extensive air showers (EAS) experiments results is strongly based on air shower simulations. The latter being based on hadronic interaction models, any new model can help for the understanding of the nature of cosmic rays.…
Measurements of the muon content of extensive air showers at the highest energies show discrepancies compared to simulations as large as the differences between proton and iron. This so-called muon puzzle is commonly attributed to a lack of…
In this article, I will review how observations performed with extensive air showers are being used to probe hadronic interactions at high energy. I will briefly overview the new studies exploring the connection between the dynamics of air…
We discuss the relation between remnant fragmentation in inelastic high-energy hadronic interactions and muon production in extensive cosmic ray air showers. Using a newly developed tool, a simple and flexible hadronic event generator, we…
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…
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…
Extensive Air Showers are complex macroscopic objects initiated by single ultra-high energy particles. They are the result of millions of high energy reactions in the atmosphere and can be described as the superposition of hadronic and…
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…