Heidelberg 2022 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 72: Cosmic Ray 3
T 72.6: Talk
Wednesday, March 23, 2022, 17:30–17:45, T-H31
Extrapolation uncertainty of meson-air cross-sections in UHECR air shower simulations — •Maximilian Reininghaus1,2, Ralf Ulrich1, Ralph Engel1, and Tanguy Pierog1 — 1Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Karlsruhe, Deutschland — 2Instituto de Tecnologías en Detección y Astropartículas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
The interaction cross-sections of long-lived hadrons with air nuclei are an important ingredient in the simulation of air showers initiated by high energy cosmic rays. For protons they are tightly constrained by LHC measurements. For other species, in particular pions, which are the most abundant hadrons in air showers, however, precise measurements are available only at low energies. Since there exists significant leeway in a large energy range up to the highest energies, hadronic interation models differ in their extrapolations by up to 30 %.
In this contribution, we study the impact of this extrapolation uncertainty on air shower phenomenology by introducing ad hoc, energy-dependent factors to scale the cross-sections for each species independently. Using a hybrid setup with CORSIKA 8 and CONEX, we simulate UHECR air showers with these modified cross-sections and study the effect on muon content, shower maximum and muon production depth. We find that the longitudinal development is sizeably affected, while the particle content changes only to a minor degree.