2021/01/04 by David Schmidt, Schmidt, David
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2101.01252
openalex publication_date 2021/01/04 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The characteristics of an extensive air shower derive from both the mass of\nthe primary ultra-high-energy cosmic ray that seeds its development and the\nproperties of the hadronic interactions that feed it. With its hybrid detector\ndesign, the Pierre Auger Observatory measures both the longitudinal development\nof showers in the atmosphere and the lateral distribution of particles arriving\nat the ground, from which a number of parameters are calculated and compared\nwith predictions from current hadronic interaction models tuned to LHC data. At\npresent, a tension exists concerning the production of muons, in that the\nmeasured abundance exceeds all predictions. This discrepancy, measured up to\ncenter-of-mass energies of \∼ 140 TeV, is irresolvable through mass\ncomposition arguments, constrained by measurements of the depth of the\nelectromagnetic-shower maximum. Here, we discuss a compilation of\nhadronically-sensitive shower observables and their comparisons with model\npredictions and conclude with a brief discussion of what measurements with the\nnew detectors of the AugerPrime upgrade will bring to the table.\n