Investigation of Electromagnetic and Muonic Air-Shower Components using IceTop Simulations

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of a two-component lateral distribution function method in reconstructing muonic and electromagnetic components of air showers in IceTop, and examines how hadronic interaction models influence muon distribution results.

Contribution

It introduces a two-component LDF reconstruction technique for IceTop data and investigates its dependence on different hadronic interaction models.

Findings

Reconstructed muon distributions match simulated data accurately.

Reconstructed muon LDF parameters vary with hadronic interaction models.

The method improves understanding of air-shower components in IceTop.

Abstract

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory studies cosmic-ray initiated extensive air showers (EASs) using the IceTop surface array, which is sensitive to the electromagnetic component and low-energy ($\sim$ GeV) muonic component of EASs. The contribution from the two components is reconstructed on an event-by-event basis by simultaneously fitting separate lateral distribution functions (LDFs) for both the electromagnetic and muonic components of each shower. In this work, we demonstrate the ability of the two-component LDF reconstruction to recreate the muon distribution in IceTop accurately. The parameters characterizing the reconstructed muonic LDF can vary significantly based on the choice of hadronic interaction model. Thus, the dependence of the reconstructed muon LDF and other parameters on the hadronic interaction models is investigated.