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Studies of the mass composition of cosmic rays and proton-proton interaction cross-sections at ultra-high energies with the Pierre Auger ObservatoryOlena Tkachenko,
Andrej Filipčič,
Jon Paul Lundquist,
Shima Ujjani Shivashankara,
Samo Stanič,
Serguei Vorobiov,
Danilo Zavrtanik,
Marko Zavrtanik, 2023, published scientific conference contribution
Abstract: In this work, we present an estimate of the cosmic-ray mass composition from the distributions of the depth of the shower maximum (�max) measured by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. We discuss the sensitivity of the mass composition measurements to the uncertainties in the properties of the hadronic interactions, particularly in the predictions of the particle interaction cross-sections. For this purpose, we adjust the fractions of cosmic-ray mass groups to fit the data with �max distributions from air shower simulations. We modify the proton-proton cross-sections at ultra-high energies, and the corresponding air shower simulations with rescaled nucleus-air cross-sections are obtained via Glauber theory. We compare the energydependent composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays obtained for the different extrapolations
of the proton-proton cross-sections from low-energy accelerator data.
Keywords: Pierre Auger Observatory, ultra-high energy cosmic rays, extensive air shower, hadronic interactions, cross-section, Xmax
Published in RUNG: 23.01.2024; Views: 345; Downloads: 5
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