Can We Observe the Quark Gluon Plasma in Cosmic Ray Showers ?

Abstract

The possibility of detection of some features of high energy particle interactions with detectors placed at medium depths underground through studies on high energy muons is investigated. These muons carry information about the early interactions occurring during the development of the hadron cascade near the top of the atmosphere. They might reveal the effects resulting from creation of quark gluon plasma in interactions of ultra high energy cosmic ray iron nuclei with air nuclei.

16 pages, 8 figures, amended version

References in corpus (4)

• A Measurement of the Cosmic Ray Spectrum and Composition at the Knee
• Electron, Muon, and Hadron Lateral Distributions Measured in Air-Showers by the KASCADE Experiment
• Elemental Composition of Cosmic Rays near the Knee by Multiparameter Measurement of Air Showerss
• Production of transverse energy from minijets in next-to-leading order perturbative QCD

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Long-Lived Particles at the Energy Frontier: The MATHUSLA Physics Case
• Study of cosmic ray events with high muon multiplicity using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Exploring Potential Signatures of QGP in UHECR Ground Profiles
• Soft Particle Production in Very High Energy Hadron Interactions