SMuK 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 70: Cosmic Ray III
T 70.5: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 22. März 2023, 16:50–17:05, POT/0013
Measurement of the p-p cross section at √s ≥ 50 TeV using cosmic-ray induced air showers detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory — •Olena Tkachenko for the Pierre Auger collaboration — Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
In this talk, we present a measurement of the proton-proton interaction cross sections from the distribution of the depth of air shower maximum, Xmax, measured by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. In previous analyses, the interaction cross section was obtained assuming the predominance of protons in the tail of the Xmax distribution. Similarly, assumptions on hadronic interactions in air showers were needed to estimate the mass composition of cosmic rays. To get a self-consistent estimation of the interaction cross sections and cosmic-ray primary composition, we implement an algorithm for the combined measurement of the interaction cross sections and composition fractions. For this, we perform a standard binned maximum-likelihood mass composition fit with the varied proton-proton interaction cross sections. The conversion from the modified proton-proton to the corresponding nucleus-nucleus cross sections is done via the Glauber formalism. We include a shift in the Xmax scale to account for systematic uncertainties of the data and theoretical uncertainties of the properties of particle production in air showers. The preliminary cross sections and composition fractions obtained using this novel self-consistent approach will be compared to the previous measurements and future improvements to the method will be discussed.