Hadronic scaling and ratios of cosmic-ray components in the atmosphere

Abstract

Using the scaling hypothesis of hadronic inclusive reactions at high energy and data from accelerators we compute ratios of cosmic-ray components in the atmosphere. For the μ +/ μ − ratio at sea level we find that the inclusion on nuclear effects results in a better agreement with experimental data. In the case of the ( π + + π −)/p ratio, we predict a value at high energy that is considerably larger than the one usually inferred from lower energy data.