Speaker
Description
Over the last two decades, various experiments have measured muon densities in extensive air showers over several orders of magnitude in primary energy. While some experiments observed differences in the muon densities between simulated and experimentally measured air showers, others reported no discrepancies. We will present an update of the meta-analysis of muon measurements from nine air shower experiments, covering shower energies between a few PeV and tens of EeV and muon threshold energies from a few 100 MeV to about 10 GeV. In order to compare measurements from different experiments, their energy scale was cross-calibrated and the experimental data has been compared using a universal reference scale based on air shower simulations. Above 10 PeV, we find a muon excess with respect to simulations for all hadronic interaction models considered. This excess is increasing with shower energy, and for the models EPOS-LHC and QGSJet-II.04 the slope of the increase is found to be significant with more than 8 sigma.
Keywords
WHISP; Extensive Air Showers; Atmospheric Muons
| Subcategory | Experimental Results |
|---|---|
| other Collaboration | Working Group on Hadronic Interactions and Shower Physics (WHISP) |
