Mass Composition of Cosmic Rays with Combined Surface Detector Arrays

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to determine the mass composition of cosmic rays using combined surface detector data and the Constant Intensity Cut principle, with simulations for different energy ranges.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining muonic and electromagnetic detector data with the Constant Intensity Cut method for cosmic-ray composition analysis.

Findings

Effective composition analysis at knee energies.

Feasibility of composition determination at ultra-high energies.

Low sensitivity to hadronic interaction models.

Abstract

Our study exploits the Constant Intensity Cut principles applied simultaneously to muonic and electromagnetic detectors of cosmic rays. We use the fact that the ordering of events according to their signal sizes induced in different types of surface detectors provides information about the mass composition of primary cosmic-ray beam, with low sensitivity to details of hadronic interactions. Composition analysis at knee energies is performed using Monte Carlo simulations for extensive air showers having maxima located far away from a hypothetical observatory. Another type of a hypothetical observatory is adopted to examine composition of ultra-high energy primaries which initiate vertical air showers with maxima observed near surface detectors.