Extensive Air Shower Simulations with CORSIKA and the Influence of HighEnergy Hadronic Int.pdfVIP

EXTENSIVE AIR SHOWER SIMULATIONS WITH CORSIKA AND THE INFLUENCE OF HIGH-ENERGY HADRONIC INTERACTION MODELS D. HECK FOR THE KASCADE COLLABORATION Institut f¨ur Kernphysik, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, D-76021 Karlsruhe, 1 Germany 0 E-mail:heck@ik3.fzk.de 0 2 When high-energy cosmic rays (γ ’s, protons, or heavy nuclei) impinge onto the r Earth’s atmosphere, they interact at high altitude with the air nuclei as targets. a By repeated interaction of the secondaries an ‘extensive air shower’ (EAS) is gen- erated with huge particle numbers in the maximum of the shower development. M Such cascades are quantitatively simulated by the Monte Carlo computer program CORSIKA. The most important uncertainties in simulations arise from modeling 5 of high-energy hadronic interactions: a) The inelastic hadron-air cross sections. b) The energies occurring in EAS may extend far above the energies available in 1 man-made accelerators, and when extrapolating towards higher energies one has v to rely on theoretical guidelines. c) In collider experiments which are used to ad- 3 just the interaction models the very forward particles are not accessible, but just 7 those particles carry mos