Study of hadrons at the cores of extensive air showers and the elemental composition of cosmic rays at <span class="aps-inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><msup><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow><mrow><mn>15</mn></mrow></msup></mrow></math></span> eV

H. T. Freudenreich; A. I. Mincer; D. Berley; J. A. Goodman; S. Tonwar; A. Wrotniak; G. B. Yodh; R. W. Ellsworth

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.2732

Study of hadrons at the cores of extensive air showers and the elemental composition of cosmic rays at $10^{15}$ eV

H. T. Freudenreich, A. I. Mincer, D. Berley, J. A. Goodman, S. Tonwar, A. Wrotniak, G. B. Yodh, and R. W. Ellsworth

Phys. Rev. D 41, 2732 – Published 1 May 1990

Abstract

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 100-10000 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 100-10000-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.

Received 11 September 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.41.2732

Authors & Affiliations

H. T. Freudenreich^*, A. I. Mincer^†, D. Berley^‡, J. A. Goodman, S. Tonwar^§, A. Wrotniak^*, and G. B. Yodh^∥

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

R. W. Ellsworth

George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030

^*Present address: ST Systems Corporation, Lanham, MD 20706.
^†Present address: New York University, New York, NY 10013.
^‡On leave from the National Science Foundation, Washington, DC 20550.
^§Present address: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India 400 005.
^∥Present address: University of California at Irvine, Irvine, California 92717.

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Vol. 41, Iss. 9 — 1 May 1990

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Physical Review D

covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology