Constraining the energy spectrum of neutral pions in ultra-high-energy proton-air interactions
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Rúben Conceição; Miguel A. Martins; Lorenzo Cazon; Felix Riehn
- Source
- Physical Review D. 103
- Subject
- High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
Physics
Muon
Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors
010308 nuclear & particles physics
Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
FOS: Physical sciences
Cosmic ray
01 natural sciences
Nuclear physics
Atmosphere
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
Pion
High energy proton
0103 physical sciences
Content (measure theory)
Energy spectrum
High Energy Physics::Experiment
Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
010306 general physics
Energy (signal processing)
- Language
- ISSN
- 2470-0029
2470-0010
Fluctuations in the muon content of extensive air showers are anticorrelated to the fluctuations of the energy taken by the neutral pions which emerge from the first interaction of the cosmic ray in the atmosphere. We show that the high-energy tail of the neutral pion spectrum produced in the first proton-air interaction can be constrained, within the uncertainties of present cosmic ray experiments, through the analysis of the shower-to-shower distribution of the muon content of the air showers, $P({N}_{\ensuremath{\mu}})$.