Measurements and tests of hadronic interactions at ultra-high energies with the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

Extensive air showers are complex objects, resulting of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic ray at ultra-high-energy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the details of hadronic interactions. Many of the interactions that determine the shower features occur in kinematic regions and at energies beyond those tested by human-made accelerators. We will report on the measurement of the proton-air cross section for particle production at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon of 39 TeV and 56 TeV. We will also show comparisons of post-LHC hadronic interaction models with shower data by studying the moments of the distribution of the depth of the electromagnetic maximum, the number and production depth of muons in air showers, and finally a parameter based on the rise-time of the surface detector signal, sensitive to the electromagnetic and muonic component of the shower. While there is good agreement found for observables based on the electromagnetic shower component, discrepancies are observed for muon-sensitive quantities.

arXiv commentUltra High Energy Cosmic Rays 2018 (UHECR2018)

References in corpus (18)

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
• 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
• Muons in air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Mean number in highly inclined events
• Testing Hadronic Interactions at Ultrahigh Energies with Air Showers Measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Report on Tests and Measurements of Hadronic Interaction Properties with Air Showers
• Muons in air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Measurement of atmospheric production depth
• AugerPrime: the Pierre Auger Observatory Upgrade
• Interpretation of the Depths of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers Measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Reconstruction of inclined air showers detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Prototype muon detectors for the AMIGA component of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• A model for the transport of muons in extensive air showers
• Probing the energy spectrum of hadrons in proton air interactions at ultrahigh energies through the fluctuations of the muon content of extensive air showers
• Azimuthal asymmetry in the risetime of the surface detector signals of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Measurement of the average shape of longitudinal profiles of cosmic-ray air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Probing the ${\pi }^0$ spectrum at high-$x$ in proton-Air interactions at ultra-high energies
• Average shape of longitudinal shower profiles measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory