Test of high-energy hadronic interaction models with high-altitude cosmic-ray data

Abstract

Emulsion experiments placed at high mountain altitudes register hadrons and high-energy γ-rays with an energy threshold in the TeV region. These secondary shower particles are produced in the forward direction of interactions of mainly primary protons and alpha-particles in the Earth's atmosphere. Single γ's and hadrons are mainly produced by the interactions of the primary cosmic-ray nuclei of primary energy below 10 15 eV. Therefore the measurements are sensitive to the physics of high-energy hadronic interaction models, e.g., as implemented in the Monte Carlo air shower simulation program CORSIKA. By use of detailed simulations invoking various different models for the hadronic interactions we compare the predictions for the single-particle spectra with data of the Pamir experiment. For higher primary energies characteristics of so-called gamma-ray families are used for the comparisons. Including detailed simulations for the Pamir detector we found that the data are incompatible with the HDPM and SIBYLL 1.6 models, but are in agreement with QGSJET, NEXUS, and VENUS.