https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201921002006
Probing the π0 spectrum at high-x in proton-Air interactions at ultra-high energies
1
Laboratörio de Instrumentaçâo e Física Experimental de Partículas (LIP) Lisbon, Av. Prof. Gama Pinto 2, 1649-003 Lisbon, Portugal
2
Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
* e-mail: friehn@lip.pt
Published online: 17 May 2019
The average number of muons in air showers and its connection with shower development has been studied extensively in the past. With the upcoming detector upgrades, UHECR observatories will be able to probe higher moments of the distribution of the number of muons. Here a study of the physics of the fluctuations of the muon content is presented. In addition to proving that the fluctuations must be dominated by the first interactions, we show that low-Nμ tail of the shower-to-shower distribution of the number of muons is determined by the high-xL region of the production cross-section of neutral pions in the first interaction.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2019
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), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
