Whereas air shower simulations are very valuable tools for interpreting cosmic ray data, there is a long-standing problem: it is difficult to accommodate at the same time the longitudinal development ...of air showers and the number of muons measured on the ground. Using a new hadronic interaction model (EPOS) in air shower simulations produces much more muons, in agreement with results from the HiRes-MIA experiment. We find that this is mainly due to a better description of (anti) baryon production in hadronic interactions. This is an aspect of air shower physics which has been neglected so far.
We show that a fluid dynamical scenario, already well tested against identified particle p(t) spectra, describes quantitatively the observed mass splitting of the elliptical flow coefficients v(2) ...for pions and protons. This provides a strong argument in favor of the existence of a fluid dynamical expansion in p-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV.
One of the most important experimental results for proton-proton scattering at the LHC is the observation of a so-called "ridge" structure in the two-particle correlation function versus the ...pseudorapidity difference Δη and the azimuthal angle difference Δφ. One finds a strong correlation around Δφ=0, extended over many units in Δη. We show that a hydrodynamical expansion based on flux tube initial conditions leads in a natural way to the observed structure. To get this result, we have to perform an event-by-event calculation, because the effect is due to statistical fluctuations of the initial conditions, together with a subsequent collective expansion. This is a strong point in favor of a fluidlike behavior even in pp scattering, where we have to deal with length scales of the order of 0.1 fm.
We present a sophisticated treatment of the hydrodynamic evolution of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, based on the following features: initial conditions obtained from a flux tube approach, ...compatible with the string model and the color glass condensate picture; an event-by-event procedure, taking into the account the highly irregular space structure of single events, being experimentally visible via so-called ridge structures in two-particle correlations; the use of an efficient code for solving the hydrodynamic equations in 3+1 dimensions, including the conservation of baryon number, strangeness, and electric charge; the employment of a realistic equation of state, compatible with lattice gauge results; the use of a complete hadron resonance table, making our calculations compatible with the results from statistical models; and a hadronic cascade procedure after hadronization from the thermal matter at an early time.
We demonstrate that underlying assumptions concerning the structure of constituent parton Fock states in hadrons make a strong impact on the predictions of hadronic interaction models for forward ...hadron spectra and for long-range correlations between central and forward hadron production. Our analysis shows that combined studies of proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider by central and forward-looking detectors have a rich potential for discriminating between the main model approaches.
We present a summary of recent tests and measurements of hadronic interaction properties with air showers. This report has a special focus on muon density measurements. Several experiments reported ...deviations between simulated and recorded muon densities in extensive air showers, while others reported no discrepancies. We combine data from eight leading air shower experiments to cover shower energies from PeV to tens of EeV. Data are combined using the
z
-scale, a unified reference scale based on simulated air showers. Energy-scales of experiments are cross-calibrated. Above 10 PeV, we find a muon deficit in simulated air showers for each of the six considered hadronic interaction models. The deficit is increasing with shower energy. For the models EPOS-LHC and QGSJet-II.04, the slope is found significant at 8 sigma.
We report the observation of a steepening in the cosmic ray energy spectrum of heavy primary particles at about 8×10(16) eV. This structure is also seen in the all-particle energy spectrum, but is ...less significant. Whereas the "knee" of the cosmic ray spectrum at 3-5×10(15) eV was assigned to light primary masses by the KASCADE experiment, the new structure found by the KASCADE-Grande experiment is caused by heavy primaries. The result is obtained by independent measurements of the charged particle and muon components of the secondary particles of extensive air showers in the primary energy range of 10(16) to 10(18) eV. The data are analyzed on a single-event basis taking into account also the correlation of the two observables.
An efficient scheme for one-dimensional extensive air shower simulation and its implementation in the program
conex are presented. Explicit Monte Carlo simulation of the high-energy part of hadronic ...and electro-magnetic cascades in the atmosphere is combined with a numeric solution of cascade equations for smaller energy sub-showers to obtain accurate shower predictions. The developed scheme allows us to calculate not only observables related to the number of particles (shower size) but also ionization energy deposit profiles which are needed for the interpretation of data of experiments employing the fluorescence light technique. We discuss in detail the basic algorithms developed and illustrate the power of the method. It is shown that Monte Carlo, numerical, and hybrid air shower calculations give consistent results which agree very well with those obtained within the
corsika program.
EPOS-LHC is the public EPOS version, heavily used by experimental groups in high energy and cosmic ray physics. It is based on an S-matrix approach, being the ideal framework for multiple scattering ...in small systems. However, factorization and binary scaling do not come for free, it is a very complex issue, and in the current model it is simply not properly done. Another topic concerns flow, which is only implemented as ‘‘parameterized,’’ with is quite a limited applications. There was substantial progress during the past few years, referred to as ‘‘EPOS4 project,’’ to develop a consistent formalism, which accommodates a multiple scattering S-matrix approach, factorization, and saturation, all of these topics being closely related to each other. In addition, secondary interactions are considered, most importantly a full hydrodynamic evolution. In this talk, we will report about the status of the EPOS4 project.
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