Influence of Low Energy Hadronic Interactions on Air-shower Simulations

Abstract

Experiments measuring cosmic rays above an energy of 10^14 eV deduce the energy and mass of the primary cosmic ray particles from air-shower simulations. We investigate the importance of hadronic interactions at low and high energies on the distributions of muons and electrons in showers on ground. In air shower simulation programs, hadronic interactions below an energy threshold in the range from 80 GeV to 500 GeV are simulated by low energy interaction models, like Fluka or Gheisha, and above that energy by high energy interaction models, e.g. Sibyll or QGJSJet. We find that the impact on shower development obtained by switching the transition energy from 80 GeV to 500 GeV is comparable to the difference obtained by switching between Fluka and Gheisha.

4 pages, 6 figures, ISVHECRI 2008

References in corpus (6)

• One-dimensional Hybrid Approach to Extensive Air Shower Simulation
• New facts about muon production in Extended Air Shower simulations
• Inclusive production of charged pions in p+C collisions at 158 GeV/c beam momentum
• Test of hadronic interaction models with data from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Transverse spin effects of sea quarks in unpolarized nucleons
• Sensitivity of Extensive Air Showers to Features of Hadronic Interactions at Ultra-High Energies

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Measurements of the Cosmic Ray Composition with Air Shower Experiments
• Measurements of Cross Sections and Charged Pion Spectra in Proton-Carbon Interactions at 31 GeV/c
• Hadronic Multiparticle Production at Ultra-High Energies and Extensive Air Showers
• Results from NA61/SHINE
• Sibyll${}^{★}$
• Road map for the tuning of hadronic interaction models with accelerator-based and astroparticle data
• Composition determination of cosmic rays from the muon content of the showers
• Probing the ${\pi }^0$ spectrum at high-$x$ in proton-Air interactions at ultra-high energies