The KASCADE-Grande observatory was a ground-based air shower array devoted to the study of the energy and composition of cosmic rays with energies from 1 PeV to 1 EeV. The experiment consisted of different detector systems which allowed the simultaneous measurement of distinct components of the air showers (EAS), such as the muon content. In this contribution, we study the total muon number and the lateral density distribution of muons in EAS detected by KASCADE-Grande. The data are analyzed as a function of the zenith angle and the total number of charged particles. The attenuation length of the muon content of EAS is also measured. The results are compared with the predictions of the SIBYLL 2.3 hadronic interaction model. * Speaker.

Abstract. The KASCADE-Grande observatory was a ground-based air shower array dedicated to study the energy and composition of cosmic rays in the energy interval E = 1 PeV −1 EeV. The experiment consisted of different detector systems which allowed the simultaneous measurement of distinct components of air showers (EAS), such as the muon content. In this contribution, we study the total muon number and the lateral density distribution of muons in EAS detected by KASCADE-Grande as a function of the zenith angle and the total number of charged particles. The attenuation length of the muon content of EAS is also measured. The results are compared with the predictions of the SIBYLL 2.3 high-energy hadronic interaction model.

Muons in extensive air showers (EAS) are a sensitive probe for the primary cosmic ray mass and the physics of hadronic interactions at very high energies, hence it is important to precisely measure and carefully analyze this particular shower component. In practice, however, such measurements are difficult to carry out due to the penetrating nature of muons and their low density in the shower. This way just in a few experimental facilities the shower muon component has been measured event-by-event in combination with other EAS observables. One of them was the multicomponent air shower experiment KASCADE-Grande, which was designed to study cosmic rays in the energy interval from 1 PeV to 1 EeV and was located at the site of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany at 110 m a.s.l. In this work, we will present an analysis of the KASCADE-Grande data in terms of the muon content (E µ > 230 MeV) of cosmic-ray induced air showers as a function of the primary energy (E = 10 PeV −1 EeV) and the zenith angle (< 35 •). We test also the predictions on the shower muon content of the post-LHC hadronic interaction models EPOS-LHC, QGSJET-II-04, SIBYLL 2.3 and SIBYLL 2.3c by comparing the model expectations with experimental results.

KASCADE-Grande and its original array of KASCADE were dedicated to measure individual air showers of cosmic rays with great detail in the primary energy range of 100 TeV up to 1 EeV. The experiment has significantly contributed to investigations of the energy spectrum and chemical composition of cosmic rays in the transition region from galactic to extragalactic origin of cosmic rays as well as to the further development of hadronic interaction models through validity tests using the multi-detector information from KASCADE-Grande. Though the data accumulation was completed in 2013, the data analysis is still continuing. Recently, we investigate the reliability of the new hadronic interactions model of the Sibyll version 2.3d with the combined data from KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande, and compare it to the predictions of different hadronic interaction models. In addition, we update the web-based platform of the KASCADE Cosmic Ray Data Centre (KCDC), where now full datasets from KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande and the corresponding Monte-Carlo simulated events are available.

In this work, we report measurements on the muon content (Eth > 230 MeV) of extensive air showers (EAS) induced by cosmic rays with primary energy from 10 PeV up to 1 EeV performed with the KASCADE-Grande experiment. The measurements are confronted with SIBYLL 2.3. The results are focused on the dependence of the total muon number and the lateral density distribution of muons in EAS on the zenith angle and the total number of charged particles in the shower. We also present updated results of a detailed study of the attenuation length of shower muons, which reveal a deviation between the measured data and the predictions of the post-LHC hadronic interaction models SIBYLL 2.3, QGSJET-II-04 and EPOS-LHC.