EAS thermal neutron lateral and temporal distributions

TL;DR

This paper presents initial measurements of thermal neutron lateral and temporal distributions in extensive air showers using the PRISMA-32 array, revealing exponential lateral profiles consistent with hadron production models.

Contribution

It introduces the PRISMA-32 array with specialized scintillator detectors and provides the first experimental data on thermal neutron distributions in EAS.

Findings

Neutron lateral distributions fit exponential profiles consistent with hadron production.

Temporal neutron distributions align with previous prototype data.

Electron lateral distribution matches NKG function.

Abstract

A novel type of EAS array (PRISMA-32) has been constructed on the base of NEVOD-DECOR experiment (MEPhI,Moscow) and is now taking data. It consists of 32 specially designed scintillator en-detectors able to measure two main EAS components: hadrons (n) and electrons (e). First results on thermal neutron lateral as well as temporal distributions are presented. Obtained exponential neutron lateral distributions are consistent with that expected for normal hadron production with exponential transverse momentum distribution. As there are no other experimental data on thermal neutron distributions and so, to compare results with other measurements, we additionally obtained electron lateral distribution function (using the same detectors) and compared it with NKG - function. Recorded neutron temporal distributions are very close to that obtained with data of our previous prototypes.