Dominant Contributions to Lateral Distribution Functions in Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Air Showers

Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Scientific paper

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19 pages, 21 figures

Scientific paper

10.1016/S0927-6505(02)00203-7

In hadron induced air showers of highest energies (E> 1e18 eV), the lateral distribution functions of electrons and muons are a superposition of many separate electromagnetic sub-showers, initiated by meson decay at different altitudes and energies. The lateral distribution function is the primary tool for reconstructing the energy of the primary in a UHE cosmic ray shower, so understanding it in detail is a prerequisite for having confidence in the energy determination. We analyze in this paper the dominant contributions to the ground level lateral distribution functions, as a function of the altitude and energy at which the sub-showers are initiated. Far from the core, the dominant contribution to the density of electrons comes from sub-showers initiated at low altitudes and low energies (E<100 GeV). The dominant sub-showers are initiated at large radial distance from the core and at a large angle with respect to the main shower axis. This demonstrates the need for careful treatment of low energy hadron physics modeling even for ultrahigh energy primaries.

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