Related papers: Modified Hadronic Interactions and the future of U…
Several air shower observatories have established that the number of muons produced in UHE air showers is significantly larger than that predicted by models. We argue that the only solution to this muon deficit, compatible with the observed…
A Monte Carlo generator of high energy cosmic ray interactions, relying on a very basic and transparent theoretical formalism, in the framework of the Reggeon Field Theory, is presented. The main motivation for our work is to provide a new…
The shape of the longitudinal development of the showers generated in the atmosphere by very high energy cosmic ray particles encodes information about the mass composition of the flux, and about the properties of hadronic interactions that…
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…
Interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) accelerated in specific astrophysical environments have been shown to shape the energy production rate of nuclei differently from that of the secondary neutrons escaping from the…
The results of high energy simulated experiments where a given hadronic particle impacts on a given target are statistically analyzed. The energy range of the projectiles goes from below the LHC scale up to the highest cosmic ray energies.…
Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are studied with giant ground-based detector systems recording extensive air showers, induced by cosmic ray particles in the atmosphere. Research at the Pierre Auger Observatory - the largest of such…
The Pierre Auger Observatory aims to determine the nature and origin of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR). The Auger hybrid detector combines fluorescence observations of extended air showers, initiated in the atmosphere by these…
An analysis has been made of the present situation with respect to the high energy hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus interaction models as applied to cosmic rays. As is already known, there are inconsistencies in the interpretation of…
Since 2006, EPOS hadronic interaction model is being used for very high energy cosmic ray analysis. Designed for minimum bias particle physics and used for having a precise description of SPS and RHIC heavy ion collisions, EPOS brought more…
Several methods developed within the Pierre Auger Collaboration for the estimation of the muonic component of the Extensive Air Showers observed in the surface Cherenkov detectors are described. The results derived from the data show a…
In this report a summary of recent developments in the fields of high-energy nuclear interactions (HE 1) and air shower phenomenology (HE 2) is presented. New results from accelerator and cosmic-ray experiments and the progress in 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…
In its Phase I, the Pierre Auger Observatory has led to several observations, driving the field of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) research over the last 20 years. Major achievements obtained so far include the unprecedented precise…
The Pierre Auger (cosmic ray) Observatory provides a laboratory for studying fundamental physics at energies far beyond those available at colliders. The Observatory is sensitive not only to hadrons and photons, but can in principle detect…
A quantitative analysis of model uncertainties for calculations of the maximum depth of proton-initiated extensive air showers (EAS) has been performed. Staying within the standard physics picture and using the conventional approach to 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…
We demonstrate that a substantial part of the present uncertainties in model predictions for the average maximum depth of cosmic ray-induced extensive air showers is related to very high energy pion-air collisions. Our analysis shows that…
In the last years a general consensus has emerged on the use of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) data as a powerful probe of the validity of special relativity. This applies in particular to the propagation of cosmic rays from their…
The mass composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is commonly inferred from the first two moments of the depth of shower maximum, $X_{\rm max}$, measured by fluorescence and hybrid detectors. Such analyses require fast and…