Related papers: Percolation and cosmic ray physics above $10^{17}$…
We describe the measurement of the depth of maximum, Xmax, of the longitudinal development of air showers induced by cosmic rays. Almost four thousand events above 10^18 eV observed by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger…
The average number of muons in air showers and its connection with shower development has been studied extensively in the past. With the upcoming detector upgrades, UHECR observatories will be able to probe higher moments of the…
The energy dependence of such characteristics as a ratio of the total number of charged particles to the total flux of EAS Cherenkov radiation, a ratio of E(thr)>=1GeV muon flux density at the distance of 600m from a shower core to charged…
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…
Nuclear Coulomb potential at completely ionized and extremely thin atmosphere can leaks to a macroscopic spatial scale. This effect is used to explain the difference between the energy spectra of cosmic-ray electrons around $1 TeV$ measured…
We review all existing air-fluorescence measurements of the elongation rate of extensive air showers (slope of mean EAS shower maximum (Xmax) vs log of shower energy E) above 1017 eV. We find remarkable agreement for all current and…
The dependence E_h (N_e) of Extensive Air Shower (EAS) hadronic component energy flux on the number N_e of particles in EAS is investigated in the primary energy range of the order of 10^{15} - 10^{17} eV. The work was aimed at checking the…
We present measurements of the depth of shower maximum, Xmax, for cosmic-ray-induced extensive air showers recorded by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory over 17 years. The data set covers primary energies from…
A neutron star harbors of order $10^{56}$ electrons in its core, and almost the same number of muons, with muon decay prohibited by Pauli blocking. However, as macroscopic properties of the star such as its mass, rotational velocity, or…
Charged particles multiplicity distributions at the maximum of electromagnetic showers initiated by 5 to 1000 GeV electrons in Fe, W, and Pb were calculated using GEANT4. It is shown that they are reasonably well fitted by the inverse sum…
The muon charge ratio of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays may provide information to detect the composition of the primary cosmic rays. We propose to extract the charge information of high energy muons in very inclined extensive air showers by…
New analysis of lateral distributions (LD) of electrons, muons and charged particles in extensive air showers generated by $10^{15}-10^{19}$ eV cosmic rays has been made with respect to the scaling formalism for LD and air shower…
In this article a new method is proposed for estimating the mass composition of cosmic rays in individual events with energies above $1.25 \times 10^{19}$ eV. It is based on a joint analysis of experimental data and simulation results…
We find that the ratio r_{mu e} of the muon to the electromagnetic component of an extended air shower at the ground level provides an indirect measure of the depth X_{max} of the shower maximum. This result, obtained with the air-shower…
Arrival directions of extensive air showers by using world data are considered. It is found that the shower distribution in zenith angle at the energies E>10^{19} eV and E>4x10^{19} eV differs from each other. By our estimations, the shower…
We discuss collective effects like percolation, quark gluon plasma, or string fusion and their effect on the longitudinal development of high energy showers in air. It is shown that iron-air showers could develop more slowly than expected…
The mass composition of high energy cosmic rays above $10^{17}$ eV is a crucial issue to solve some open questions in astrophysics such as the acceleration and propagation mechanisms. Unfortunately, the standard procedures to identify the…
We analyse the sensitivity of geosynchrotron radio emission from inclined extensive air showers to the energy and mass of primary cosmic rays. We demonstrate that radio emission measurements at suitable lateral distances can infer both the…
We study the spectrum and average mass composition of cosmic rays with primary energies between 10^{17} eV and 10^{18} eV using a hybrid detector consisting of the High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) prototype and the MIA muon array.…
We present a new and complete numerical analysis of the decay of super-heavy X particles, assumed to be the origin of cosmic rays with energy beyond the GZK cut-off. The decay of X initiates a ``parton shower'', where we include all degrees…