Mutually compensative pseudo solutions of primary energy spectra in the knee region

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-uniqueness of solutions in reconstructing cosmic ray energy spectra from air shower data, revealing that multiple pseudo solutions can explain the same data, which may cause discrepancies across experiments.

Contribution

It demonstrates that unfolding primary energy spectra in the knee region can produce mutually compensative pseudo solutions, highlighting a fundamental ambiguity in cosmic ray spectrum analysis.

Findings

Unfolding spectra leads to pseudo solutions.

Pseudo solutions can explain experimental discrepancies.

Non-uniqueness affects cosmic ray spectrum interpretation.

Abstract

The problem of the uniqueness of solutions during the evaluation of primary energy spectra in the knee region using an extensive air shower (EAS) data set and the EAS inverse approach is investigated. It is shown that the unfolding of primary energy spectra in the knee region leads to mutually compensative pseudo solutions. These solutions may be the reason for the observed disagreements in the elementary energy spectra of cosmic rays in the 1-100 PeV energy range obtained from different experiments.