Impact of Uncertainties in Hadron Production on Air-Shower Predictions

At high energy, cosmic rays can only be studied by measuring the extensive air showers they produce in the atmosphere of the Earth. Although the main features of air showers can be understood within a simple model of successive interactions, detailed simulations and a realistic description of particle production are needed to calculate observables relevant to air shower experiments. Currently hadronic interaction models are the main source of uncertainty of such simulations. We will study the effect of using different hadronic models available in CORSIKA and CONEX on extensive air shower predictions.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the proceedings of International Conference on Interconnection between High Energy Physics and Astroparticle Physics: From Colliders to Cosmic Rays, Prague, Czech Republic, 7-13 Sep 200

Hadronic multiparticle production in extensive air showers and accelerator experiments

Using CORSIKA for simulating extensive air showers, we study the relation between the shower characteristics and features of hadronic multiparticle production at low energies. We report about investigations of typical energies and phase space regions of secondary particles which are important for muon production in extensive air showers. Possibilities to measure relevant quantities of hadron production in existing and planned accelerator experiments are discussed.Comment: To be published in Proceedings of ICRC 2005, 29th International Cosmic Ray Conferenc

Complexity in surfaces of densest packings for families of polyhedra

Packings of hard polyhedra have been studied for centuries due to their mathematical aesthetic and more recently for their applications in fields such as nanoscience, granular and colloidal matter, and biology. In all these fields, particle shape is important for structure and properties, especially upon crowding. Here, we explore packing as a function of shape. By combining simulations and analytic calculations, we study three 2-parameter families of hard polyhedra and report an extensive and systematic analysis of the densest packings of more than 55,000 convex shapes. The three families have the symmetries of triangle groups (icosahedral, octahedral, tetrahedral) and interpolate between various symmetric solids (Platonic, Archimedean, Catalan). We find that optimal (maximum) packing density surfaces that reveal unexpected richness and complexity, containing as many as 130 different structures within a single family. Our results demonstrate the utility of thinking of shape not as a static property of an object in the context of packings, but rather as but one point in a higher dimensional shape space whose neighbors in that space may have identical or markedly different packings. Finally, we present and interpret our packing results in a consistent and generally applicable way by proposing a method to distinguish regions of packings and classify types of transitions between them.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Plant-Level Adjustment and Aggregate Investment Dynamics

macroeconomics, Plant-Level Adjustment, Aggregate Investment Dynamics

The effect of a cutoff on pushed and bistable fronts of the reaction diffusion equation

We give an explicit formula for the change of speed of pushed and bistable fronts of the reaction diffusion equation when a small cutoff is applied at the unstable or metastable equilibrium point. The results are valid for arbitrary reaction terms and include the case of density dependent diffusion.Comment: 7 page