Probing the energy spectrum of hadrons in proton air interactions at ultrahigh energies through the fluctuations of the muon content of extensive air showers

Abstract

We demonstrate that the shower-to-shower fluctuations of the muon content of extensive air showers correlate with the fluctuations of a variable of the first interaction of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays, which is computed from the fraction of energy carried by the hadrons that sustain the hadronic cascade. The influence of subsequent stages of the shower development is found to play a sub-dominant role. As a consequence, the shower-to-shower distribution of the muon content is a direct probe of the hadron energy spectrum of interactions beyond 100 TeV center of mass energies.

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Open Questions in Cosmic-Ray Research at Ultrahigh Energies
• The Muon Puzzle in cosmic-ray induced air showers and its connection to the Large Hadron Collider
• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays: The Intersection of the Cosmic and Energy Frontiers
• Measurement of the fluctuations in the number of muons in extensive air showers with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Core-corona effect in hadron collisions and muon production in air showers
• Constraining the energy spectrum of neutral pions in ultra-high-energy proton-air interactions
• What is the nature and origin of the highest-energy particles in the universe?
• Atmospheric muons measured with the KM3NeT detectors in comparison with updated numeric predictions
• Determination of the Cosmic-Ray Chemical Composition: Open Issues and Prospects
• Modeling Strangeness Enhancements to resolve the Muon Excess in Cosmic Ray Extensive Air Shower Data
• Air shower genealogy for muon production
• Measurements and tests of hadronic interactions at ultra-high energies with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Measurement of the mean number of muons with energies above 500 GeV in air showers detected with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• A Model of the Response of Surface Detectors to Extensive Air Showers Based on Shower Universality
• Probing the ${\pi }^0$ spectrum at high-$x$ in proton-Air interactions at ultra-high energies
• Proton-air interactions at ultra-high energies in muon-depleted air showers with different depths
• Calculation of rescaling factors and nuclear multiplication of muons in extensive air showers
• Probing the high energy spectrum of neutral pions in ultra-high energy proton-Air interactions
• Particle density fluctuations and correlations in low energy Cosmic-Ray showers simulated with CORSIKA