Proton-air cross section measurement with the ARGO-YBJ cosmic ray experiment

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of the proton-air cross section in the 1-100 TeV range using the ARGO-YBJ cosmic ray detector, providing insights into high-energy particle interactions beyond accelerator capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to measure the proton-air cross section across a wide energy range using cosmic ray data, accounting for shower fluctuations and primary composition effects.

Findings

Proton-air cross section increases with energy in the 1-100 TeV range.

Estimated proton-proton cross sections align with extrapolations from accelerator data.

Provides data for energies where no accelerator measurements are available.

Abstract

The proton-air cross section in the energy range 1-100 TeV has been measured by the ARGO-YBJ cosmic ray experiment. The analysis is based on the flux attenuation for different atmospheric depths (i.e. zenith angles) and exploits the detector capabilities of selecting the shower development stage by means of hit multiplicity, density and lateral profile measurements at ground. The effects of shower fluctuations, the contribution of heavier primaries and the uncertainties of the hadronic interaction models, have been taken into account. The results have been used to estimate the total proton-proton cross section at center of mass energies between 70 and 500 GeV, where no accelerator data are currently available.