Kinematic Description of Alignment Effect in Cosmic Rays

Abstract

The important role of kinematic constraints for the origin of the alignment of hadron and photon families observed by the Pamir collaboration in emulsion experiments with cosmic rays is discussed. Within the framework of the suggested approach it is shown that the high degree of alignment of the interaction products of the target nuclei and cosmic rays can be a consequence of the selection procedure of the most energetic clusters of particles together with the law of conservation of transverse momentum. The obtained results correctly describe the experimental data for three energetic centers and are also close enough to the measurements in the case of four and five clusters, which indicates encouraging prospects for the proposed method of explaining the alignment phenomenon.