CORSIKA Implementation of Heavy Quark Production and Propagation in Extensive Air Showers

TL;DR

This paper introduces new models for heavy quark production and propagation in extensive air shower simulations, enhancing the accuracy of cosmic ray atmospheric interaction modeling.

Contribution

It implements two heavy quark production models and a dedicated heavy hadron interaction treatment in CORSIKA, a widely used EAS simulation tool.

Findings

Heavy quark effects influence air shower development

New models are integrated into CORSIKA for better simulation accuracy

Enhanced understanding of heavy hadron propagation in atmosphere

Abstract

Heavy quarks are commonly produced in current accelerator experiments. Hence it is natural to think that they should be likewise created in collisions with larger center of mass energies like the ones involving ultra-high energy cosmic rays and atmospheric nuclei. Despite this fact, a detailed treatment of heavy hadrons is missing in Monte Carlo generators of Extensive Air Showers (EAS). It is a must to improve the description of how heavy flavours appear and evolve in atmospheric showers. With this goal in mind, we study two different models for heavy quark production in proton-air collisions. We also analyze a dedicated treatment of heavy hadrons interactions with atmospheric nuclei. This paper shows how those models have been implemented as new options available in CORSIKA, one of the most used EAS simulators. This new computational tool allows us to analyze the effects that the propagation of heavy hadrons has in the EAS development