The shape of the extensive air shower (EAS) longitudinal profile contains information about the nature of the primary cosmic ray. However, with the current detection capabilities, the assessment of this quantity in an event-by-event basis is still very challenging. In this work we show that the average longitudinal profile can be used to characterise the average behaviour of high energy cosmic rays. Using the concept of universal shower profile it is possible to describe the shape of the average profile in terms of two variables, which can be already measured by the current experiments. These variables present sensitivity to both average primary mass composition and to hadronic interaction properties in shower development. We demonstrate that the shape of the average muon production depth profile can be explored in the same way as the electromagnetic profile having a higher power of discrimination for the state of the art hadronic interaction models. The combination of the shape variables of both profiles provides a new powerful test to the existing hadronic interaction models, and may also provide important hints about multi-particle production at the highest energies.Peer Reviewe
