The electromagnetic structure of air shower cores at sea level

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
An analysis has been made of 2 400 shower cores observed with the 32-m2 neon hodoscope of the Kiel air shower experiment, yielding the following results:1. More than 99% of all showers show a more or less steep single-core distribution.2. The Δ/N distribution (Δ = central density, N = shower size) has a total width of about a factor of 10, showing no appreciable change in that width with increasing shower size in the interval ranging from N = 105 to about 107.3. Only a few double-cored events (4–9) have been found, all of them close to a shower size of 105 particles.4. On the basis of a Monte Carlo simulation of showers initiated by primary particles with different atomic weights, it is concluded that the hypothesis of observed multicored events being due to heavy primaries meets no serious difficulties. However, the cascade process and the associated fluctuations seriously reduce the number of subcores observable; and this reduction effect increases with atomic weight.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: