Analysis of cosmic ray data in terms of models of high energy interactions

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Abstract
A variety of cosmic ray data are analysed from the point of view of determining the effective multiplicity of charged pions produced in the interactions of the primary cosmic rays with air nuclei. If intranuclear cascading is small and the primaries are mainly protons then the multiplicity is higher than that given by the 'scaling' hypothesis, which has been shown to have a measure of applicability at ISR energies. Agreement with scaling can be restored if the mean mass of the primary particles increases dramatically above a few times 1014 eV but such a change seems very unlikely both in view of various extensive air shower phenomena and because of astrophysical considerations.
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