Measurements of the average muon energy in inclined muon bundles in the NEVOD-DECOR experiment

Muon puzzle in inclined muon bundles detected by NEVOD-DECOR

“…One of the possible approaches to studying the energy characteristics of the EAS muon component is to measure the energy deposit of muon bundles in the detector material (in our case, in the Cherenkov water calorimeter, see e.g. [14][15][16]), since muon energy loss in the matter almost linearly depends on their energy: d E/d X ∼ a + bE.…”

“…For this purpose, a mathematical model of the NEVOD-DECOR setup was developed based on the Geant4 simulation toolkit (v. 10.7) [17]. The calibration of the model was carried out by comparing the results of calculating the response of the NEVOD detector to the passage of nearhorizontal muons with experimental data [16]. Near-horizontal muons were sampled using SMs of the detector DECOR located in opposite short galleries of the experimental building.…”

“…Next, the response of the NEVOD-DECOR setup to artificial muon bundles with a fixed energy of 100 GeV was simulated using a Monte Carlo technique [16]. Both the physical features of the detectors and the conditions for selecting events with muon bundles used in the experiment were taken into account.…”

“…The desired experimental dependences of the average muon energy in the bundles on the zenith angle and on the local muon density were obtained (see [16] in detail) from the ratio of the measured and calculated specific energy deposits in the NEVOD-DECOR setup. At that, the dependence of the average losses in water on the muon energy normalized to losses at 100 GeV [18] which is practically linear in the region of hundreds of GeV was used.…”