Precise determination of muon shower content from shower universality property

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a highly accurate method to estimate muon content in air showers using only the vertical depth of shower maximum and total ground signal, largely independent of primary energy, particle type, or zenith angle.

Contribution

It introduces a universal estimation technique for muon shower content based on shower universality properties, validated with extensive simulated data.

Findings

Estimation accuracy is high across various primary energies and particle types.

Method is robust against variations in zenith angle.

Validation performed on 21,500 simulated showers.

Abstract

It is shown, that highly accurate estimation of muon shower content can be performed on the basis of knowledge of only vertical depth of shower maximum and total signal in ground detector. The estimate is almost independent on primary energy and particle type and on zenith angle. The study is performed for 21500 showers, generated with CORSIKA~6.204 from spectrum $E^{-1}$ in the energy range $\log10(E)$ [eV]=18.5--20 and uniformly in $\cos^2{\theta}$ in zenith angle interval $\theta=0^\circ-65^\circ$ for QGSJET II/Fluka interaction models.