Radio emission from particle showers can be used as a method of neutrino detection in the high and very high energy range as a Cherenkov pulse originates from the charge excess developing in the ...medium. Our study presents simulations of neutrino induced showers in rock salt and the radio emission that they generate, using the HERWIG, GEANT4 and AIRES codes. We have performed a complete study of all neutrino flavours interacting on nuclei, both for charged-current and neutral-current interactions, using the knowledge and codes available today. As primary neutrino energies we have chosen three values: 1012eV, 1015eV and 1017eV. We have injected all the particles resulting from the first interactions into shower simulation codes.
Salt is one of the dielectric media proposed for radio detection of neutrinos already in the sixties of last century, and can be found in large volumes throughout the world.
The calculation of the radio signal was performed considering the entire shower evolution, by approximating the shower with a current density. We have taken into account, in the equations, only the longitudinal profile. The aim of this study is to investigate whether different interactions can be discriminated in an experiment for detection of high energy particles based on the radio emission from the showers they initiate in a dense medium. For this we have performed and systematically analyzed simulations from several points of view.
Precise measurements of the muon flux are important for different practical applications, in environmental studies and for the estimation of the water equivalent depths of underground sites. A first ...configuration of the mobile detector was composed of two 1 m2 scintillator plates, each viewed by wave length shifters and read out by two PMTs (Photomultiplier Tubes). A more recent configuration of the mobile muon detectors, set up in IFIN-HH, Romania, consists of two 1 m2 detection layers, each one including four 1×0.25 m2 large scintillator plates. The light output in each plate is collected by twelve optical fibers and then read out by one PMT. The calibration has been made by comparing the energy deposit spectrum of minimum ionizing particles with the spectra simulated with the GEANT4 code. The device is used to measure the muon flux on different locations at the surface and underground.
In this work, we report measurements on the muon content (E
th
> 230 MeV) of extensive air showers (EAS) induced by cosmic rays with primary energy from 10 PeV up to 1 EeV performed with the ...KASCADE-Grande experiment. The measurements are confronted with SIBYLL 2.3. The results are focused on the dependence of the total muon number and the lateral density distribution of muons in EAS on the zenith angle and the total number of charged particles in the shower. We also present updated results of a detailed study of the attenuation length of shower muons, which reveal a deviation between the measured data and the predictions of the post-LHC hadronic interaction models SIBYLL 2.3, QGSJET-II-04 and EPOS-LHC.
Precise measurements of the muon flux are important for different practical applications, both in environmental studies and for the estimation of the water equivalent depths of underground sites. A ...mobile detector for cosmic muon flux measurements has been set up at IFIN-HH, Romania. The device is used to measure the muon flux on different locations at the surface and underground. Its first configuration, not used in the present, has been composed of two 1 m2 scintillator plates, each viewed by wave length shifters and read out by two Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs). A more recent configuration, consists of two 1 m2 detection layers, each one including four 1 · 0,25 m2 large scintillator plates. The light output in each plate is collected by twelve optical fibers and then read out by one PMT. Comparative results were obtained with both configurations.
The KASCADE-Grande air shower experiment 1 consists of, among others, a large scintillator array for measurements of charged particles, Nch, and of an array of shielded scintillation counters used ...for muon counting, Nμ. KASCADE-Grande is optimized for cosmic ray measurements in the energy range 10PeV to about 2000PeV, where exploring the composition is of fundamental importance for understanding the transition from galactic to extragalactic origin of cosmic rays. Following earlier studies of the all-particle and the elemental spectra reconstructed in the knee energy range from KASCADE data 2, we have now extended these measurements to beyond 200PeV. By analysing the two-dimensional shower size spectrum Nch vs. Nμ for nearly vertical events, we reconstruct the energy spectra of different mass groups by means of unfolding methods over an energy range where the detector is fully efficient. The procedure and its results, which are derived based on the hadronic interaction model QGSJET-II-02 and which yield a strong indication for a dominance of heavy mass groups in the covered energy range and for a knee-like structure in the iron spectrum at around 80PeV, are presented. This confirms and further refines the results obtained by other analyses of KASCADE-Grande data, which already gave evidence for a knee-like structure in the heavy component of cosmic rays at about 80PeV 3.
The ‘KASCADE Cosmic ray Data Centre’ is a web portal (
https://kcdc.ikp.kit.edu
), where the data of the astroparticle physics experiment KASCADE-Grande are made available for the interested public. ...The KASCADE experiment was a large-area detector for the measurement of high-energy cosmic rays via the detection of extensive air showers. The multi-detector installations KASCADE and its extension KASCADE-Grande stopped the active data acquisition in 2013 after more than 20 years of data taking. In several updates since our first release in 2013 with KCDC we provide the public measured and reconstructed parameters of more than 433 million air showers. In addition, KCDC provides meta data information and documentation to enable a user outside the community of experts to perform their own data analysis. Simulation data from three different high energy interaction models have been made available as well as a compilation of measured and published spectra from various experiments. In addition, detailed educational examples shall encourage high-school students and early stage researchers to learn about astroparticle physics, cosmic radiation as well as the handling of Big Data and about the sustainable and public provision of scientific data.
KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande were multi-detector installations to measure individual air showers of cosmic rays at ultra-high energy. Based on data sets measured by KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande, 90% C.L. ...upper limits to the flux of gamma-rays in the primary cosmic ray flux are determined in an energy range of eV. The analysis is performed by selecting air showers with a low muon content as expected for gamma-ray-induced showers compared to air showers induced by energetic nuclei. The best upper limit of the fraction of gamma-rays to the total cosmic ray flux is obtained at eV with . Translated to an absolute gamma-ray flux this sets constraints on some fundamental astrophysical models, such as the distance of sources for at least one of the IceCube neutrino excess models.
•The effective muon attenuation and absorption lengths of air showers are investigated.•Air shower data of the KASCADE-Grande observatory is analyzed.•Predictions of the models SIBYLL 2.1, EPOS-LHC, ...QGSJET-II-02 and -04 are tested.•The studied models fail to describe consistently the attenuation of the muon data.
The evolution of the muon content of very high energy air showers (EAS) in the atmosphere is investigated with data of the KASCADE-Grande observatory. For this purpose, the muon attenuation length in the atmosphere is obtained to Λμ=1256±85−232+229(syst)g/cm2 from the experimental data for shower energies between 1016.3 and 1017.0 eV. Comparison of this quantity with predictions of the high-energy hadronic interaction models QGSJET-II-02, SIBYLL 2.1, QGSJET-II-04 and EPOS-LHC reveals that the attenuation of the muon content of measured EAS in the atmosphere is lower than predicted. Deviations are, however, less significant with the post-LHC models. The presence of such deviations seems to be related to a difference between the simulated and the measured zenith angle evolutions of the lateral muon density distributions of EAS, which also causes a discrepancy between the measured absorption lengths of the density of shower muons and the predicted ones at large distances from the EAS core. The studied deficiencies show that all four considered hadronic interaction models fail to describe consistently the zenith angle evolution of the muon content of EAS in the aforesaid energy regime.