Soft Particle Production in Very High Energy Hadron Interactions
arXiv:1606.03288 · doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2017.02.001
Abstract
Indications of a discrepancy between simulations and data on the number of muons in cosmic ray (CR) showers exist over a large span of energies. We focus in particular on the excess of multi-muon bundles observed by the DELPHI detector at LEP and on the excess in the muon number in general reported by the Pierre Auger Observatory. Even though the primary CR energies relevant for these experiments differ by orders of magnitude, we can find a single mechanism which can simultaneously increase predicted muon counts for both, while not violating constraints from accelerators or from the longitudinal shower development as observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory. We present a brief theoretical motivation and describe a practical implementation of such a model, based on the addition of soft particles to interactions above a chosen energy threshold. Results of an extensive set of simulations show the behavior of this model in various parts of a simplified parameter space.
Submitted to Astroparticle Physics
References in corpus (8)
- The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
- Depth of Maximum of Air-Shower Profiles at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Measurements at Energies above 10^17.8 eV
- Hadronic Multiparticle Production at Ultra-High Energies and Extensive Air Showers
- Study of multi-muon bundles in cosmic ray showers detected with the DELPHI detector at LEP
- Study of cosmic ray events with high muon multiplicity using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
- Hadronic Interactions at Cosmic Ray Energies
- Measurement of the forward charged particle pseudorapidity density in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV using a displaced interaction point
- Prompt muons in extended air showers