https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201714508001
The hadronic interaction model Sibyll – past, present and future
1 Institute for Nuclear Physics (IKP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), P.O. Box 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany
2 LIP, Av. Elias Garcia 14-1, 1000-149 Lisboa, Portugal
3 DESY, Platanenallee 6, 15738 Zeuthen, Germany
4 Bartol Research Institute & Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA
a e-mail: ralph.engel@kit.edu
b e-mail: friehn@lip.pt
Published online: 26 June 2017
Sibyll is one of the first microscopic interaction models that was specifically developed for interpreting cosmic ray data. It combines non-perturbative concepts of simulating hadronic particle production with predictions derived from perturbative QCD calculations, focusing on forward particle production of relevance in studying cosmic ray interactions. In this contribution we briefly recall the history of Sibyll and then, in this context, describe improvements made in the different versions of the Sibyll model. The discussion focuses on the basic concepts and ideas of these improvements rather than going into detail or giving a comprehensive description of the models. We also discuss shortcomings, conceptual problems, and uncertainties in modeling hadronic interactions and make some suggestions how to address these open questions in the future.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences 2016
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
