Confronting the EPOS-LHC model predictions on the charged particle and muon attenuation lengths of EAS with the measurements of the KASCADE-Grande observatory

Abstract

Abstract. KASCADE-Grande was an air-shower experiment designed to study cosmic rays between 10 16 and 10 18 eV. The instrument was located at the site of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany at an altitude of 110 m a.s.l. and covered an area of 0.5 km 2 . KASCADE-Grande consisted of several detector systems dedicated to measure different components of the EAS generated by the primary cosmic rays, i.e., the muon and the electron contents of the air-shower. With such a number of EAS observables and the precision of the measurements, the KASCADE-Grande data can be used to not only study in detail the properties of cosmic rays but also to test the predictions of hadronic-interaction models. In this work, in particular, the attenuation lengths of the muon number and the charged number of particles of EAS in the atmosphere were extracted from the KASCADE-Grande data and the results were compared with the predictions of the new EPOS-LHC hadronic-interaction model.

No muon excess in extensive air showers at 100–500 PeV primary energy: EAS–MSU results

“…atmospheric muons [27], and it has been reported in [28] that QGSJET-II-04 seems to overestimate the number of muons in this regime. Preliminary results of the KASCADE-Grande experiment (110 m a.s.l., 1022 g/cm 2 ) at E ∼ 10 17 eV suggest [29] that the atmospheric attenuation of the muon number (E µ 0.23 GeV, r/R 0 3) is underestimated by all high-energy hadronic interaction models studied there, including QGSJET-II-04. Clearly, further experimental and theoretical studies are required to understand the origin of the reported discrepancies and to arrive at a succesful model of the air-shower development.…”