Muons in air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Mean number in highly inclined events

We present the first hybrid measurement of the average muon number in air showers at ultrahigh energies, initiated by cosmic rays with zenith angles between 62° and 80°. The measurement is based on 174 hybrid events recorded simultaneously with the surface detector array and the fluorescence detecto...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Aranda, V. M., Arqueros Martínez, Fernando, García Pinto, Diego, Minaya Flores, Ignacio Andrés, Rosado Vélez, Jaime, Vázquez Peñas, José Ramón
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/22989
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/22989
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:539.1
Astronomy and astrophysics
Physics
Particles and fields Energy cosmic-rays
Detector
Model
Física nuclear
2207 Física Atómica y Nuclear
Descripción
Sumario:We present the first hybrid measurement of the average muon number in air showers at ultrahigh energies, initiated by cosmic rays with zenith angles between 62° and 80°. The measurement is based on 174 hybrid events recorded simultaneously with the surface detector array and the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The muon number for each shower is derived by scaling a simulated reference profile of the lateral muon density distribution at the ground until it fits the data. A 10^19  eV shower with a zenith angle of 67°, which arrives at the surface detector array at an altitude of 1450 m above sea level, contains on average (2.68±0.04±0.48(sys))×10^7 muons with energies larger than 0.3 GeV. The logarithmic gain d ln N_μ/dlnE of muons with increasing energy between 4×1018  eV and 5×1019  eV is measured to be (1.029±0.024±0.030(sys))