Mass composition of cosmic rays with primary energies in the region 1015-1016 eV. New treatment of Tien-Shan and Akeno data

Abstract

A method for better fitting has been used for re-analysis of experimental extensive air shower muon fluctuation data from Tien-Shan and Akeno arrays to derive information about primary mass composition. The superposition hypothesis has been applied to the treatment of these muon data, the parameter alpha in the dependence Nmu -Nealpha is evaluated simultaneously with the mass composition coefficients. As a result the authors have found that heavy and very heavy nuclei components are about 5% each. The proton amount is about 50%. The estimation of the parameter alpha is 0.7, as predicted by accelerator data.