Study of hadrons at the cores of extensive air showers and the elemental composition of cosmic rays at 10 sup 15 eV

Journal Article · Tue May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1990 · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.41.2732· OSTI ID:6770864

Freudenreich, H T; Mincer, A I; Berley, D; Goodman, J A; Tonwar, S; Wrotniak, A; Yodh, G B ^[1]; Ellsworth, R W ^[2]

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1. University of Maryland, College Park, MD (USA)
2. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA (USA)

An experiment was done near sea level at College Park, Maryland, to study hadrons near the cores of air showers resulting from primary cosmic rays of 100--10 000 TeV per nucleon. The parameters studied were (1) the rate of events which exceed a minimum shower density cut and specific hadronic calorimeter signal cuts and (2) the rate of events with hadrons delayed with respect to the shower front. Extensive computer simulations of the experiment were done using several particle-interaction and primary-composition models as well as details of the detector response. It is found that interaction models which include scaling or only modest scaling violation will fit the data only with primary spectra that are rich in heavy nuclei in the 100--10 000-TeV total-energy range. A proton-dominated flux will fit the data only when an extreme scale-breaking model is used, in disagreement with extrapolations of accelerator data.

• OSTI ID: 6770864
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA), Journal Name: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA) Vol. 41:9; ISSN PRVDA; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640101* -- Astrophysics & Cosmology-- Cosmic Radiation
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CALORIMETERS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COSMIC RADIATION
COSMIC SHOWERS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ENERGY RANGE
ENERGY SPECTRA
EXTENSIVE AIR SHOWERS
HADRONS
INTERACTIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
PARTICLE INTERACTIONS
RADIATION DETECTORS
RADIATIONS
SCALING LAWS
SCINTILLATION COUNTERS
SECONDARY COSMIC RADIATION
SHOWERS
SIMULATION
SPECTRA
TEV RANGE
TEV RANGE 100-1000