Abstract
The results of high energy simulated experiments where a given hadronic particle impacts on a given target are statistically analyzed. The energy range of the projectiles goes from below the LHC scale up to the highest cosmic ray energies. This study was carried out by using the pre- and post-LHC versions of the hadronic interaction models QGSJET, EPOS and SIBYLL. Our analysis indicates that the post-LHC models present smaller differences in various quantities that characterize the secondary particles produced after the hadronic collisions, in comparison with the corresponding differences that are found comparing the respective old (pre-LHC) versions of the hadronic models. However, it is also found that there exist some discrepancies among models that persist even at the LHC energy scale, that call for further theoretical investigation. An additional analysis of the impact that different modeling of hadronic collisions has on air shower development is also included. It consists of a detailed study of the impact of the different pre- and post-LHC versions of the hadronic models considered, for relevant observables like the muon production depth distribution.
Highlights
One of the most challenging issues in contemporary research in physics of astroparticles is the determination of the chemical composition of the highest energy primary cosmic rays (CR)
Perturbative quantum chromodynamics gives accurate results of hadronic production in high energy reactions when the processes are characterized by a large momentum transfer, the hard processes, such that the strong coupling αsðQ2Þ becomes small due to the asymptotic freedom property of QCD
QGSJET-II-03 [20,21,22] updated to QGSJET-II-04 [3], EPOS 1.99 [23,24] changed into EPOS-Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (v3400) [4] and SIBYLL 2.1[25,26] upgraded to SIBYLL 2.3 [5] and more recently to 2.3c [12]
Summary
One of the most challenging issues in contemporary research in physics of astroparticles is the determination of the chemical composition of the highest energy primary cosmic rays (CR). The recently available data on proton-proton and protonnucleus collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have improved the knowledge of physics in an extended energy region with important consequences for the EAS simulations This new information was included in the new versions of many hadronic interaction packages, in QGSJET-II [3], EPOS [4], and SIBYLL [5]. In addition to the foregoing, there are another analyses which compare the new post-LHC hadronic interaction models and their influence on the EAS observables [7,8] or which compare the hadronic packages with their previous version [4,9,10] Most of such studies focus almost entirely to illustrate how the models match the available LHC results and/or what is the impact on basic shower observables.
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