Cosmic Ray Simulation with PYTHIA

2025/12/15 by Leif Lönnblad, Lönnblad, Leif, Torbjörn Sjöstrand +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.13326

openalex publication_date 2025/12/15 · openalex created_date 2025/12/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We present recent developments in PYTHIA for the modelling of hadronic cascades in a medium. Several improvements have been made in the Angantyr model for collisions with nuclei, especially in the limit of low collision energies, allowing it to be used throughout the hadronic cascades. Also the simplified nuclear model in the PythiaCascade module has been updated. We find that the two models give consistent results for cosmic ray air showers initiated by both high energy protons and nuclei.

Citations

• CORSIKA 8 with Pythia 8: Simulating Vertical Proton Showers
• Herwig 7.3 Release Note
• Sibyll^\bigstar: ad-hoc modifications for an improved description of muon data in extensive air showers
• The particle-shower simulation code CORSIKA 8

Related

• From collider to cosmic rays: Pythia 8/Angantyr for air shower simulations in CORSIKA 8
• CORSIKA 8 with Pythia 8: Simulating Vertical Proton Showers
• Pythia 8 and Air Shower Simulations: A Tuning Perspective
• Improving Air Shower Simulations by Tuning Pythia 8/Angantyr with Accelerator Data
• Hadron-ion collisions in Pythia and the vector-meson dominance model for photoproduction