Consequences of parton saturation and string percolation on the development of cosmic ray showers.

Abstract

At high gluon or string densities, gluon saturation or the strong interaction among strings, either forming color ropes or giving rise to string percolation, induces a strong suppression in the particle multiplicities produced at high energy. This suppression implies important modifications on cosmic ray shower development. In particular, it is shown that it affects the depth of maximum, the elongation rate, and the behavior of the number of muons at energies about 10(17)--10(18) eV. The existing cosmic ray data point out in the same direction.