Cosmic ray data and their interpretation about the Tibet Shower Array Chemical Composition of Cosmic Rays at the Knee Viewed from the Tibet Air Shower Experiment.pdfVIP

Nuclear Physics B (Proc. Suppl.) 175–176 (2008) 267–272 Cosmic ray data and their interpretation: about the Tibet Shower Array — Chemical Composition of Cosmic Rays at the Knee Viewed from the Tibet Air Shower Experiment — M. Shibata Faculty of Engineering, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan for Tibet ASγ Collaboration A brief summary is given about present status of composition measurement of cosmic rays by direct observations and indirect ones which provides key information on the origin of the cosmic rays. The result of Tibet hybrid experiment measuring proton and helium spectra at the knee is presented, in which the decreasing fractions of both of the proton and helium component to the all particle spectrum with increasing energy are observed suggesting that the knee is dominated by heavy nuclei. It is planed to explicitly measure the iron spectrum at the knee by detecting the core structure of the air showers in the next phase of Tibet experiment ’YAC’ (Yangbajing Air shower Core array). 1. Introduction The origin of cosmic rays is widely studied by various methods. The observation of X-rays revealed some sources which can be interpreted as synchrotron emission from electrons accelerated in the remnant blast wave of supernovae (SNR), and recent observations by Cherenkov telescopes exhibited some of them are also emiting TeV γrays which can be interpreted as high-energyelectron origin via inverse compton scattering. Recently, remarkable progress has been made by H.E.S.S. experiment[1] which provides more information on the mechanism of the high energy γ-ray emission from SNRs. It is claimed that the analysis on wide-band spectra is better achieved by assuming proton acceleration at SNRs, however, conclusive evidence is still lacking. If the origin of protons and nuclei is SNR too, we will be able to observe very high energy gamma-ray point source with the energy spectrum indicating the decay of neutral pions. The measurement of the γ-rays in