Properties of secondary components in extensive air shower of cosmic rays in knee energy region

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to analyze secondary components in extensive air showers of cosmic rays around the knee energy, improving understanding of energy resolution and primary nuclei identification.

Contribution

It provides detailed analysis of secondary particle distributions and energy resolution in air showers, aiding in primary cosmic ray composition studies in the knee region.

Findings

Electromagnetic particles yield better energy reconstruction (10-19% for protons, 4-8% for iron).

Muon density discriminability is highest at low and high energies.

Lateral distribution shapes are effective at low energies, neutron density at high energies.

Abstract

The knee of cosmic ray spectra reflects the maximum energy accelerated by galactic cosmic ray sources or the limit to the ability of galaxy to bind cosmic rays. The measuring of individual energy spectra is a crucial tool to ascertain the origin of the knee. The Extensive Air Shower of cosmic rays in the knee energy region is simulated via CORSIKA software. The energy resolution for different secondary components and primary nuclei identification capability are studied. The energy reconstruction by using electromagnetic particles in the energy around knee is better than by using other secondary particles. The resolution is 10-19 percent for proton, and 4-8 percent for iron. For the case of primary nuclei identification capability, the discriminability of density of muons is best both at low (around 100 TeV) and high (around 10 PeV) energy, the discriminability of the shape of lateral distribution of electron and gamma-rays are good at low energy and the discriminability of density of neutrons is good at high energy. The differences between the lateral distributions of secondary particles simulated by EPOS-LHC and QGSJet-II-04 hadronic model are also studied. The results in this work can provide important information for selecting the secondary components and detector type during energy reconstruction and identifying the primary nuclei of cosmic rays in the knee region.