Results from investigations at the Tien Shan Mountain Cosmic Ray Station into the proton-air inelastic interaction cross-section at primary cosmic ray energies of 0.5–5 PeV

Abstract

This work presents an analysis of the experimental data from measurements performed at the Tien Shan Mountain Cosmic Ray Station of various components of extensive air showers produced by primary cosmic rays with energies of 0.5 to 5 PeV. Based on a comparison with model calculations, it is inferred that the cross section of inelastic interaction between protons and air nuclei varies with energy. It is concluded that as the primary cosmic ray energy increases by an order of magnitude in the range of 0.2 TeV to 5 PeV, the interaction cross section grows by 7–9%. This estimate agrees with calculations performed using a new version of the QGSJET model (QGSJET-II-0.4) based on recent Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data.