A branching model for hadronic air showers

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple branching model to understand the development of hadronic air showers in Earth's atmosphere, providing qualitative insights into muon production and the effects of primary particle mass.

Contribution

It introduces a new simplified branching model for hadronic air showers that offers qualitative understanding of shower components and their energy evolution.

Findings

Estimates the size of the pionic component and muons in air showers.

Analyzes the energy evolution of muon production depth.

Assesses the impact of primary particle mass on hadronic component size.

Abstract

We introduce a simple branching model for the development of hadronic showers in the Earth's atmosphere. Based on this model, we show how the size of the pionic component followed by muons can be estimated. Several aspects of the subsequent muonic component are also discussed. We focus on the energy evolution of the muon production depth. We also estimate the impact of the primary particle mass on the size of the hadronic component. Even though a precise calculation of the development of air showers must be left to complex Monte Carlo simulations, the proposed model can reveal qualitative insight into the air shower physics.