Related papers: Sibyll$^{\bigstar}$
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.…
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…
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 Monte Carlo model Sibyll has been designed for efficient simulation of hadronic multiparticle production up to the highest energies as needed for interpreting cosmic ray measurements. For more than 15 years, version 2.1 of Sibyll has…
We present a new version of the hadron interaction event generator Sibyll. While the core ideas of the model have been preserved, the new version handles the production of baryon pairs and leading particles in a new way. In addition,…
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…
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…
The excess of muons observed in ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray air showers relative to simulation predictions, known as the muon puzzle, provides indirect evidence of our incomplete understanding of high-energy hadronic interactions. An…
High-energy cosmic rays are observed indirectly by detecting the extensive air showers initiated in Earth's atmosphere. The interpretation of experimental data relies on accurate modeling of the air shower development. Simulations based on…
The evolution of the muon content of very high energy air showers (EAS) in the atmosphere is investigated with data of the KASCADE-Grande observatory. For this purpose, the muon attenuation length in the atmosphere is obtained to…
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…
The relation of model predictions for muon content of extensive air showers (EAS) to particular properties of hadron-air interactions is discussed. Further, using a new Monte Carlo generator of cosmic ray interactions, QGSb, the relevance…
The attenuation length of the muon content in extensive air showers provides important information regarding the generation and development of air showers. This information can be used not only to improve the description of such showers but…
Whereas air shower simulations are very valuable tools for interpreting cosmic ray data, there is a long standing problem: is seems to be impossible to accommodate at the same time the longitudinal development of air showers and the number…
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…
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 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…
We present a measurement of the density of GeV muons in near-vertical air showers using three years of data recorded by the IceTop array at the South Pole. Depending on the shower size, the muon densities have been measured at lateral…
Data from multiple experiments suggest that the current interaction models used in Monte Carlo simulations do not correctly reproduce the hadronic interactions in air showers produced by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR), in particular…
We investigate the observed muon deficit in air shower simulations when compared to ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) data. Based upon the observed enhancement of strangeness production in high-energy hadronic collisions reported by the…