First results of the air shower experiment KASCADE

The main goals of the KASCADE (KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector) experiment are the determination of the energy spectrum and elemental composition of the charged cosmic rays in the energy range around the knee at ca. 5 PeV. Due to the large number of measured observables per single shower a variety of different approaches are applied to the data, preferably on an event-by-event basis. First results are presented and the influence of the high-energy interaction models underlying the analyses is discussed.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures included, to appear in the TAUP 99 Proceedings, Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.), ed. by M. Froissart, J. Dumarchez and D. Vignau

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