Related papers: Identifying String Relics at AUGER?
The origin and nature of the highest energy cosmic ray events is currently the subject of intense investigation by giant air shower arrays and fluorescent detectors. These particles reach energies well beyond what can be achieved in…
At Auger energies only model predictions enable us to extract primary cosmic ray features. The simulation of the shower evolution depends sensitively on the first few interactions, necessarily related to the quality of our understanding of…
The study of hadronic showers, which are produced by cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere, is essential for shedding light on the origins and characteristics of high-energy particles originating from space and reaching our planet.…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest detector of ultra--high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). It uses an array of fluorescence telescopes and particle detectors at the ground to obtain detailed measurements of the energy…
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,…
Detection of (ultra-) high-energy cosmic rays with the use of radio frequency emission from extensive air showers has been proven as complimentary to existing ground array detection techniques. Great progress has been made in the…
At high energy, cosmic rays can only be studied by measuring the extensive air showers they produce in the atmosphere of the Earth. Although the main features of air showers can be understood within a simple model of successive…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are almost exclusively detected through extensive air showers, which they initiate upon interaction with the atmosphere. The longitudinal development of these air showers can be directly observed using…
The Pierre Auger Observatory has been designed to investigate the most energetic particles known, the ultra high energy cosmic rays. The observatory, covering an area of 3000 km^2, combines two different detection techniques to study the…
We recently introduced new methods to study ultrarelativistic nuclear scattering by providing a link between the string model approach and a thermal description. The string model is used to provide information about fluctuations in energy…
Radio antennas have become a standard tool for the detection of cosmic-ray air showers in the energy range above $10^{16}\,$eV. The radio signal of these air showers is generated mostly due to the deflection of electrons and positrons in…
The development of an extensive air shower depends not only on the nature of the primary ultra-high-energy cosmic ray but also on the properties of the hadronic interactions. For energies above those achievable in human-made accelerators,…
Very high energy cosmic rays are typically studied by measuring extensive air showers formed by secondary particles produced in collisions with air nuclei. The indirect character of the measurement makes the physics interpretation of cosmic…
We revisit and extend the analysis supporting a 60 year-old suggestion that cosmic rays air showers resulting from primary particles with energies above 10^{18} eV should be straightforward to detect with radar ranging techniques, where the…
To analyse ultrarelativistic nuclear interactions, usually either dynamical models like the string model are employed, or a thermal treatment based on hadrons or quarks is applied. String models encounter problems due to high string…
Extensive air showers still are our only access to the highest-energy particles in the universe, namely cosmic-ray nuclei with energies up to several 100 EeV. Studying open questions in cosmic-ray physics, like their yet unknown origin…
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…
Project GRAND presents results on the atomic composition of primary cosmic rays. This is accomplished by determining the average height of primary particles that cause extensive air showers detected by Project GRAND. Particles with a larger…
We study basic characteristics of distributions of the depths of shower maximum in air showers caused by cosmic rays with the highest energies. The consistency between their average values and widths, and their energy dependences are…