Measurement of the Muon Production Depths at the Pierre Auger Observatory

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to estimate muon production depths in extensive air showers using timing data from the Pierre Auger Observatory, providing insights into primary cosmic ray composition and hadronic interactions.

Contribution

It presents a novel technique to determine muon production depths from muon arrival times, applicable across a wide range of zenith angles and energies.

Findings

Effective estimation of muon production depths from timing data.

Method applicable to energies between 10^{19.2} and 10^{20} eV.

Analysis performed across various zenith angles.

Abstract

The muon content of extensive air showers is an observable sensitive to the primary composition and to the hadronic interaction properties. The Pierre Auger Observatory uses water-Cherenkov detectors to measure particle densities at the ground and therefore is sensitive to the muon content of air showers. We present here a method which allows us to estimate the muon production depths by exploiting the measurement of the muon arrival times at the ground recorded with the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The analysis is performed in a large range of zenith angles, thanks to the capability of estimating and subtracting the electromagnetic component, and for energies between $10^{19.2}$ and $10^{20}$ eV.