Cosmic rays provide an unique approach to study hadronic interactions at high energies in the kinematic forward direction. The KASCADE air shower experiment was the first to conduct quantitative tests of hadronic interactions with air shower data. A brief overview is given on results from KASCADE and its extension KASCADE-Grande with respect to investigations of hadronic interactions and the properties of cosmic rays.
KASCADE-Grande is a large detector array dedicated for studies of high-energy cosmic rays in the primary energy range from 100 TeV to 1 EeV. The multi-detector concept of the experimental set-up offers the possibility to measure simultaneously various observables related to the electromagnetic, muonic, and hadronic air shower components. The experimental data are compared to predictions of CORSIKA simulations using high-energy hadronic interaction models (e.g. QGSJET or EPOS), as well as low-energy interaction models (e.g. FLUKA or GHEISHA). This contribution will summarize the results of such investigations. In particular, the validity of the new EPOS version 1.99 for EAS with energy around 100 PeV will be discussed.
A large area (128 m^2) Muon Tracking Detector (MTD), located within the KASCADE experiment, has been built with the aim to identify muons (E_mu > 0.8 GeV) and their directions in extensive air showers by track measurements under more than 18 r.l. shielding. The orientation of the muon track with respect to the shower axis is expressed in terms of the radial- and tangential angles. By means of triangulation the muon production height H_mu is determined. By means of H_mu, a transition from light to heavy cosmic ray primary particle with increasing shower energy Eo from 1-10 PeV is observed. Muon pseudorapidity distributions for the first interactions above 15 km are studied and compared to Monte Carlo simulations.
KASCADE-Grande is dedicated for investigations of cosmic-ray air showers in the primary energy range from 10 PeV to 1 EeV. The multi-detector system allows us to reconstruct charged particles, electron and muon numbers for individual air showers with high accuracies. Based on the shower size ($N_{ch}$) spectra of the charged particle component, the all-particle energy spectrum of cosmic rays is reconstructed, where attenuation effects in the atmosphere are corrected by applying the constant intensity cut method. The energy calibration is performed by using CORSIKA simulations with high-energy interaction models QGSJET-II-2, QGSJET-II-4, EPOS 1.99 and SIBYLL 2.1, where FLUKA has been used as low-energy interaction model for all cases. In the different hadronic models, different abundances for shower particles are predicted. Such model differences in the observables will be compared and discussed in this contribution. Furthermore, by using data with increasing statistics, the updated energy spectra by means of different interaction models will be presented.
KASCADE-Grande and its original array of KASCADE were dedicated to measure individual air showers of cosmic rays with great detail in the primary energy range of 100 TeV up to 1 EeV. The experiment has significantly contributed to investigations of the energy spectrum and chemical composition of cosmic rays in the transition region from galactic to extragalactic origin of cosmic rays as well as to the further development of hadronic interaction models through validity tests using the multi-detector information from KASCADE-Grande. Though the data accumulation was completed in 2013, the data analysis is still continuing. Recently, we investigate the reliability of the new hadronic interactions model of the Sibyll version 2.3d with the combined data from KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande, and compare it to the predictions of different hadronic interaction models. In addition, we update the web-based platform of the KASCADE Cosmic Ray Data Centre (KCDC), where now full datasets from KASCADE and KASCADE-Grande and the corresponding Monte-Carlo simulated events are available.
Jorg R. Horandel
,W.D. Apel
,J.C. Arteaga-Velazquez
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(2017)
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"Recent results from the KASCADE-Grande cosmic-ray experiment --- Test of hadronic interaction models with air-shower data"
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J\\\"org R. H\\\"orandel
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