Characteristics of rapidity-gap distribution at cosmic-ray energies (∼1012eV)

A phenomenological study of the rapidity-gap distribution for cosmic-ray $N-N$ interactions at energies≳TeV has been reported. The observations indicate strong short-short correlations in rapidity gaps which support Snider's two-channel multiperipheral cluster model. The cluster size and cluster density at these energies have been estimated to be 6.5 and 1.0, respectively. It is found that with increasing energy, the cluster size practically remains constant but the number of clusters produced per collision rises slowly.