Systematic uncertainties in air shower measurements from high-energy hadronic interaction models

Abstract

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 to the range of the most energetic cosmic rays observed ($>10^{20}$ eV). Model uncertainties are evaluated within the QGSJET-II model, by varying some of the crucial parameters in the limits allowed by collider data, and between QGSJET-II and other models commonly used in air shower simulations. The crucial parameters relate to hard processes, string fragmentation, diffraction and baryon production. Results on inelastic cross sections, on secondary particle production and on the properties of air showers measured by ground detectors from energies of $10^{12}$ to $10^{19}$ eV are presented.

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• Measurements of the Cosmic Ray Composition with Air Shower Experiments
• Depth of Maximum of Air-Shower Profiles at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Measurements at Energies above 10^17.8 eV
• Measurement of the proton-air cross-section at $\sqrt{s}=57$ TeV with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Monte Carlo design studies for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• LHC data on inelastic diffraction and uncertainties in the predictions for longitudinal EAS development
• Galactic diffuse gamma rays meet the PeV frontier
• Measurement of forward neutral pion transverse momentum spectra for $\sqrt{s}$ = 7TeV proton-proton collisions at LHC
• Measurement of the inelastic cross section in proton-lead collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV
• DAEMONFLUX: DAta-drivEn MuOn-calibrated atmospheric Neutrino Flux
• On the model-dependence of the relation between minimum-bias and inelastic proton-proton cross sections
• High-Energy Galactic Cosmic Rays (Astro2020 Science White Paper)
• Effect of the uncertainty in the hadronic interaction models on the estimation of the sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Air Shower Simulation and Hadronic Interactions
• Calibration of the Cherenkov Telescope Array using Cosmic Ray Electrons
• On the parametrization of the distributions of depth of shower maximum of ultra-high energy extensive air showers
• Investigating the influence of diffractive interactions on ultra - high energy extensive air showers