Lateral distributions of electrons in air showers initiated by ultra-high energy gamma quanta taking into account LPM and geomagnetic field effects

Abstract

Lateral distributions of electrons in air showers initiated by photons of ultra high energies (1018 − 1022 eV) obtained on the basis of numerical solution of adjoint cascade equations are presented. An extended analysis has been made considering separately the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect and the interaction of photons and electrons with the geomagnetic field (GMF) with respect to the scaling formalism for lateral distributions. It is shown that one-parametric scaling description of the lateral distribution of electrons remains valid up to the highest energies considering the LPM and GMF effects, that allows effective primary particle type discrimination using the surface detectors data of largest ground-based air shower arrays.