Report on Tests and Measurements of Hadronic Interaction Properties with Air Showers

¹ Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
² Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Universidad Michoacana, C.P. 58040 Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico
³ LIP, Lisbon, Portugal
⁴ Bartol Institute, University of Delaware, Delaware, USA
⁵ Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
⁶ High Energy Astrophysics Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
⁷ D.V. Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia
⁸ Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 60th October Anniversary Prospect 7a, Moscow 117312, Russia
⁹ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany
¹⁰ Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
¹¹ Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Jang-an-gu, Suwon, Korea
¹² National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow 115409, Russia
¹³ EAS-MSU experiment, Moscow, Russia
¹⁴ IceCube Neutrino Observatory, Madison WI, USA
¹⁵ KASCADE-Grande experiment, Karlsruhe, Germany
¹⁶ NEVOD-DECOR experiment, Moscow, Russia
¹⁷ Pierre Auger Observatory, Malargüe, Argentina
¹⁸ SUGAR Array, Sidney, Australia
¹⁹ Telescope Array Project, Salt Lake City UT, USA
²⁰ Yakutsk EAS Array, Yakutsk, Russia

^* e-mail: hdembins@mpi-hd.mpg.de Full author list: https://icecube.wisc.edu/collaboration/authors/icecube Full author list: http://www.auger.org/archive/authors_2018_10.html Full author list: http://www.telescopearray.org/research/collaborators Full author list: https://ikfia.ysn.ru/en/theyakutskarrayteam

Published online: 17 May 2019

Abstract

We present a summary of recent tests and measurements of hadronic interaction properties with air showers. This report has a special focus on muon density measurements. Several experiments reported deviations between simulated and recorded muon densities in extensive air showers, while others reported no discrepancies. We combine data from eight leading air shower experiments to cover shower energies from PeV to tens of EeV. Data are combined using the z-scale, a unified reference scale based on simulated air showers. Energy-scales of experiments are cross-calibrated. Above 10 PeV, we find a muon deficit in simulated air showers for each of the six considered hadronic interaction models. The deficit is increasing with shower energy. For the models EPOS-LHC and QGSJet-II.04, the slope is found significant at 8 sigma.