Study of the chemical composition of high energy cosmic rays using the muon LDF of EAS between $10^{17.25}$ eV and $10^{17.75}$ eV

TL;DR

This study assesses the potential of using muon lateral distribution parameters from extensive air showers to determine the composition of high-energy cosmic rays, employing Monte Carlo simulations with updated hadronic models.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate cosmic ray primary composition at high energies using ground and underground muon data analyzed through new simulation models.

Findings

Muon parameters can discriminate primary cosmic ray types effectively.

Discrimination power varies with zenith angle and primary energy.

Simulation results support feasibility of composition analysis at ultra-high energies.

Abstract

We explore the feasibility of estimating primary cosmic ray composition at high energies from the study of two parameters of Extensive Air Showers (EAS) at ground and underground level with Monte Carlo simulations using the new EPOS and QGSJETII hadronic models tuned with LHC data. Namely, the slope and density at a given distance of the muon lateral distribution function are analysed in this work. The power to discriminate primary masses is quantified in terms of merit factor for each parameter. The analysis considers three different primary particles (proton, iron and gamma), four different zenith angles (0$^{\circ}$, 15$^{\circ}$, 30$^{\circ}$ and 45$^{\circ}$) and primary energies of $10^{17.25}$ eV, $10^{17.50}$ eV and $10^{17.75}$ eV.