Related papers: A basic model for high energy cosmic ray interacti…
The physics content of the QGSJET-III Monte Carlo generator of high energy hadronic collisions is discussed. New theoretical approaches implemented in QGSJET-III are addressed in some detail and a comparison to alternative treatments of…
Air showers, produced by the interaction of energetic cosmic rays with the atmosphere, are an excellent alternative to study particle physics at energies beyond any human-made particle accelerator. For that, it is necessary to identify…
The hadronization procedure of the QGSJET-III Monte Carlo (MC) generator of high energy hadronic interactions is discussed. Selected results of the model, regarding production spectra of secondary particles, are presented in comparison to…
Contemporary models of hadronic interactions are reviewed. Basic phenomenological approaches are compared, with an emphasizes on the predicted air shower characteristics. Special attention is payed to the remaining discrepancies between…
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…
The physics content of the QGSJET-III Monte Carlo model of high energy hadronic interactions is briefly described. The predictions of the model for extensive air shower characteristics are presented in comparison to the corresponding…
The status of present theoretical description of very high energy hadronic interactions is reviewed. The impact of new results of accelerator and cosmic ray experiments on hadronic interaction model constructions is discussed in detail.…
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…
Cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere allow for the probing of fundamental interactions at ultra-high energies. We thus obtain limits on strongly coupled new physics models via their imprints on cosmic-ray air showers. Using the Monte…
Understanding hadronic interactions at high energies represents a very important ingredient for modeling high energy cosmic ray air showers. In this paper, we present a new approach to simulate hadronic interactions, including…
In this report we review the important progress made in recent years towards understanding the experimental data on ultra-high-energy ($E \gtrsim 10^9$ GeV) cosmic rays. We begin with a general survey of the available data, including a…
Observations of cosmic rays have been improving at all energies, with higher statistics and reduced systematics. Fundamental questions remain regarding the origins of cosmic rays both within the Galaxy and in extragalactic sources, and new…
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…
The status of some popular models to simulate hadronic and nuclear interactions at Cosmic Ray energies is reviewed. The models predict the rise of all the hadronic and nuclear cross sections with energy and a smooth (logarithmic) rise of…
The recent observations of muon charge ratio up to about 10 TeV and of atmospheric neutrinos up to energies of about 400 TeV has triggered a renewed interest into the high-energy interaction models and cosmic ray primary composition. A…
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). We have…
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…
We describe the general aspects of Monte Carlo Collision Generators suitable for cosmic ray nucleon-Air and nuclei-Air interactions, including accelerator and collider data. The problem of the extrapolation at 3 energy decades above the LHC…
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…
Inelastic pp collisions are dominated by soft (low momentum transfer) physics where perturbative QCD cannot be fully applied. A deep understanding of both soft and semi-hard processes is crucial for predictions of minimum bias and…