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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2007 Meeting

Section: Nuclear and Elementary Particles Physics

Title:

Study of the electron lateral distribution function in cosmic ray air showers

Authors:

C. Morariu(a), C. Manailescu(a), H. Rebel(b), O. Sima(a)

Affiliation:

(a)Physics Department, University of Bucharest, Romania

(b)Institut für Kernphysik, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany

E-mail

claudia.morariu@gmail.com

Keywords:

cosmic ray, air showers

Abstract:

When primary cosmic rays (protons, helium, and heavier ions) penetrate from the outer space into the Earth’s atmosphere they initiate the development of Extensive Air Showers (EAS) by multiple production of particles in cascading interactions with atmospheric nuclei. Photons, electrons and positrons are the most numerous secondary particles in an EAS event. The reconstruction of the electron lateral distribution on the basis of data collected with array detectors located at ground level is a very important task in cosmic ray experiments such as the KASCADE-Grande experiment (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe). The reason is that the correlation of electron and muon lateral distributions is a rich source of information about the nature and the energy of the primary cosmic rays In this work the distribution of the electron and positron density in EAS is studied using extensive air showers simulated with the CORSIKA program for the location of the KASCADE-Grande experiment. The pattern of the radial and the azimuth dependence of the electron and positron distributions as a function of the incoming direction of the primary cosmic ray is investigated. In the observation plane the azimuth dependence is dominated by geometric and attenuation effects; the influence of the Earth’s magnetic field is comparatively less important. The correct understanding and description of the azimuth dependence of the lateral distribution is extremely important for reconstructing the lateral distribution in the case of typical array detectors, in which the detection area is a small fraction of the area covered by the array.