www.elsevier.tiocate/npe Towards the Energy Spectrum and Composition of Primary Cosmic Rays in the Knee Region: Methods and Results at KASCADE

KASCADE (KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector) is a multi-detector setup to observe the electro-magnetic, muonic and hadronic air shower components simultaneously at primary energies in the region of the “knee”. A large number of observables per single shower are registered. The main aims of the experiment are the determination of the primary energy spectrum around the “knee ” and the energy variation of the chemical composition. The measurements reveal an increasing mean mass of the primary cosmic rays above the observed kink, and a sharper knee for the light primary component than for the all-particle spectrum, and the absence of a knee for the heavy component between 1 and 10 PeV. 1