Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Extensive air showers accompanied by. gamma. -ray families with summationE/sub. gamma. //sub ,//sub H/greater than or equal to10 TeV and general extensive air showers

Journal Article · · Phys. Rev. D; (United States)
Extensive air showers (EAS's) accompanied by families of high-energy cascade showers were observed at Mt. Norikura (738 g cm/sup -2/). 99 families of ..gamma..-ray- and hadron-origin showers with total energies summationE/sub ..gamma..//sub ,//sub H/greater than or equal to10 TeV were obtained. The success rate of the combination between families and EAS's reaches to almost 90% (87 events). The families are associated with young EAS's, with mean age parameter sapprox.0.7, whose sizes distribute widely over three orders of magnitude up to 10/sup 8/. The size spectrum of the family-associated EAS's coincides with the general EAS's in the size region above 5 x 10/sup 6/ but the former drops rapidly from the latter below this critical size. From the absolute intensity of summationE/sub ..gamma..//sub ,//sub H/ spectrum the proton fraction in the primary cosmic rays is deduced to be (14 +- 5)%, with an error of one standard deviation, in the primary energies (5 x 10/sup 14/)--10/sup 16/ eV, in comparison with a Monte Carlo simulation assuming an adequate interaction model. This agrees with the result obtained by the work with other mountain data and is also compatible with the result inferred from the size spectrum gap between the family-associated EAS's and the general EAS's in the region below the critical size.
Research Organization:
Department of Physics, Konan University, Kobe, Japan
OSTI ID:
6535591
Journal Information:
Phys. Rev. D; (United States), Journal Name: Phys. Rev. D; (United States) Vol. 39:5; ISSN PRVDA
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English