Speaker
Description
The study of the muon content in extensive air showers (EAS) is relevant for understanding the origin and nature of cosmic rays. Moreover, muons serve as a sensitive observable to hadronic interactions in air showers, offering insight into high-energy physics processes. However, discrepancies between measured and predicted shower muon content have been reported by some EAS observatories at energies above 100 PeV, hinting to deficiencies of high-energy hadronic interaction models. In this work, we study the muon content of EAS with KASCADE-Grande data for primary energies between 100 PeV and 1 EeV, considering showers with zenith angles $\theta \leq 40 ^{\circ}$. In particular, we estimate the local muon density at a radial distance of 600 m from the shower core and explore its dependence on atmospheric depth by dividing the data into three zenith angle intervals. Adapting the energy scale from the Pierre Auger Observatory we compare the data against predictions of the QGSJET-II-04, EPOS-LHC, and SIBYLL 2.3d hadronic interaction models for pure Fe and H nuclei. We find that local muon densities at this lateral distance attenuate less with atmospheric depth than expected. None of the used hadronic interaction models provide a consistent description across all zenith angles.
| Collaboration(s) | KASCADE-Grande Collaboration |
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