EAS experiment on board of the Airbus A380

We consider taking the opportunity of about 10.000 hours of test of the Airbus A380, and to install at passenger space detectors for high energy cosmic ray events. The altitude of 10 km (250 g/cm 2 ) would give opportunity to measure EAS originating from heavy primaries to energies exceeding 10 7 GeV, and also coming without interaction proton component beyond the energy of the knee. At the altitude the iron originated EAS are well developed and registering their lateral distribution in 70 meters long cabin it is possible to distinguish them from proton originated EAS. Hadron component of EAS (registered as number of secondary hadrons produced in the detector) would help in discrimination and energy estimation. On another hand, registrations of high energy protons (without EAS) would enable to measure high energy proton spectrum. The energy of the proton would be estimated via hadron multiplicity in single interaction inside the detector. We propose to use about 60 modules of 0.5 m 2 of active detectors with scintillators to detect E-M component and carbon target with lead layer to detect the hadronic component via neutron registrations

High energy cosmic rays in the low stratosphere and extrapolation above LHC energies

We review the data obtained with the emulsion chambers boarded on Concorde for the events collected above 106 GeV and their specific properties (large multiplicities, multiclusters, coplanar emission): the main features are compared to the expectation of our HDPM2 Monte Carlo collision generator. This multiproduction event generator has been adjusted and tuned, according to the pseudo-rapidity distributions recently observed at √s = 630 GeV, as well as to previous Fermi-lab results at √s = 1800 GeV: an increase of the total inelasticity (0.72 for NSD component) near the knee region and a more important violation than usually expected for Feynman’s scaling in forward region are observed. In such cirumstance, we have simulated large and giant air showers taking into account, in addition, new processes, such as diquark breaking, up to energies exceeding 1020 eV for P.AUGER and EUSO experiments

Lateral distribution functions for giant air showers

We have compared the lateral analytical structure functions coming from cascade theory to the numerical distributions generated by EAS Monte Carlo simulations and to the empirical functions used in giant air showers experiments. Introducing the Gaussian hypergeometric formalism, we have improved the analytical description in the most common topological situations and we propose a new function characterized by both terms fitted separately to the electron-positron and the muon components. Important effects in the accuracy of the core position determination are underlined and consequences for the primary energy estimation are discussed. The consecutive treatment and interpretation of the data contained in the catalogues of Volcano Ranch and Yakutsk, completed by the most energetic event of AGASA, are presented. Results might have important implications for detector configuration of the future giant air shower arrays

Large Transverse Momenta in Statistical Models of High Energy Interactions

The creation of particles with large transverse momenta in high energy hadronic collisions is a long standing problem. The transition from small- (soft) to hard- parton scattering `high-pt' events is rather smooth. In this paper we apply the non-extensive statistical framework to calculate transverse momentum distributions of long lived hadrons created at energies from low (sqrt(s)~10 GeV) to the highest energies available in collider experiments (sqrt(s)~2000 GeV). Satisfactory agreement with the experimental data is achieved. The systematic increase of the non-extensivity parameter with energy found can be understood as phenomenological evidence for the increased role of long range correlations in the hadronization process. Predictions concerning the rise of average transverse momenta up to the highest cosmic ray energies are also given and discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

Strange quark matter in a chiral SU(3) quark mean field model

We apply the chiral SU(3) quark mean field model to investigate strange quark matter. The stability of strange quark matter with different strangeness fraction is studied. The interaction between quarks and vector mesons destabilizes the strange quark matter. If the strength of the vector coupling is the same as in hadronic matter, strangelets can not be formed. For the case of beta equilibrium, there is no strange quark matter which can be stable against hadron emission even without vector meson interactions.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure

Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays (EECR) Observation Capabilities of an "Airwatch from Space'' Mission

The longitudinal development and other characteristics of the EECR induced atmospheric showers can be studied from space by detecting the fluorescence light induced in the atmospheric nitrogen. According to the Airwatch concept a single fast detector can be used for measuring both intensity and time development of the streak of fluorescence light produced by the atmospheric shower induced by an EECR. In the present communication the detection capabilities for the EECR observation from space are discussed.Comment: 3 pages (LaTeX). To appear in the Proceedings of TAUP'9

Anisotropy studies around the galactic centre at EeV energies with the Auger Observatory

Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for anisotropies near the direction of the Galactic Centre at EeV energies. The exposure of the surface array in this part of the sky is already significantly larger than that of the fore-runner experiments. Our results do not support previous findings of localized excesses in the AGASA and SUGAR data. We set an upper bound on a point-like flux of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic Centre which excludes several scenarios predicting sources of EeV neutrons from Sagittarius $A$. Also the events detected simultaneously by the surface and fluorescence detectors (the `hybrid' data set), which have better pointing accuracy but are less numerous than those of the surface array alone, do not show any significant localized excess from this direction.Comment: Matches published versio

CORSIKA: A Monte Carlo code to simulate extensive air showers

CORSIKA is a program for detailed simulation of extensive air showers initiated by high energy cosmic ray particles. Protons, light nuclei up to iron, photons, an