# Lateral distributions of electrons in air showers initiated by ultra-high energy gamma quanta taking into account LPM and geomagnetic field effects

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how ultra-high energy gamma-ray initiated air showers develop laterally, incorporating LPM and geomagnetic effects, and confirms a scaling law useful for particle identification at extreme energies.

## Contribution

It demonstrates that the scaling description of electron lateral distributions remains valid at ultra-high energies when considering LPM and geomagnetic effects.

## Key findings

- Scaling law holds up to 10^{22} eV energies.
- LPM and geomagnetic effects influence electron distributions.
- Effective primary particle discrimination is possible.

## Abstract

Lateral distributions of electrons in air showers initiated by photons of ultra high energies ($10^{18}-10^{22}$ eV) obtained on the basis of numerical solution of adjoint cascade equations are presented. An extended analysis has been made considering separately the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect and the interaction of photons and electrons with the geomagnetic field (GMF) with respect to the scaling formalism for lateral distributions. It is shown that one-parametric scaling description of the lateral distribution of electrons remains valid up to the highest energies considering the LPM and GMF effects, that allow effective primary particle type discrimination using the surface detectors data of largest ground-based air shower arrays.