2021/05/31 by Johannes Albrecht, J. Albrecht, Lorenzo Cazon +15 · 144 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Beam (structure) #COSMIC cancer database #Connection (principal bundle) #Cosmic ray #Cosmology #Hadron #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Large Hadron Collider #Muon #Muon collider #Nuclear physics #Particle accelerator #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #astro-ph.HE #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10509-022-04054-5
published in Astrophysics and Space Science 367(3) (Springer Science+Business Media) · invited review submitted to Astrophysics and Space Science
openalex publication_date 2022/03/01 · arxiv created 2022/04/04 · arxiv updated 2022/04/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract High-energy cosmic rays are observed indirectly by detecting the extensive air showers initiated in Earth’s atmosphere. The interpretation of these observations relies on accurate models of air shower physics, which is a challenge and an opportunity to test QCD under extreme conditions. Air showers are hadronic cascades, which give rise to a muon component through hadron decays. The muon number is a key observable to infer the mass composition of cosmic rays. Air shower simulations with state-of-the-art QCD models show a significant muon deficit with respect to measurements; this is called the Muon Puzzle. By eliminating other possibilities, we conclude that the most plausible cause for the muon discrepancy is a deviation in the composition of secondary particles produced in high-energy hadronic interactions from current model predictions. The muon discrepancy starts at the TeV scale, which suggests that this deviation is observable at the Large Hadron Collider. An enhancement of strangeness production has been observed at the LHC in high-density events, which can potentially explain the puzzle, but the impact of the effect on forward produced hadrons needs further study, in particular with future data from oxygen beam collisions.