On the angular distribution of extensive air showers

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the angular distribution of extensive air showers using experimental data from the EAS MSU array, finding that exponential functions best approximate the distributions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of angular distributions of air showers and evaluates different empirical functions for approximation, identifying the exponential as most suitable.

Findings

Exponential function best fits the angular distributions.

Angular distributions are derived for showers with 2.5x10^5 to 4x10^7 charged particles.

Data obtained from the EAS MSU array supports the approximation results.

Abstract

Angular distributions of extensive air showers with different number of charged particles in the range 2.5x10^5--4x10^7 are derived using the experimental data obtained with the EAS MSU array. Possible approximations of the obtained distributions with different empiric functions available in literature, are analysed. It is shown that the exponential function provides the best approximation of the angular distributions in the sense of the chi-squared criterion.