One-dimensional hybrid approach to extensive air shower simulation

Abstract

An efficient scheme for one-dimensional extensive air shower simulation and its implementation in the program CONEX are presented. Explicit Monte Carlo simulation of the high-energy part of hadronic and electromagnetic cascades in the atmosphere is combined with a numeric solution of cascade equations for smaller energy sub-showers to obtain accurate shower predictions. The developed scheme allows us to calculate not only observables related to the number of particles (shower size) but also ionization energy deposit profiles which are needed for the interpretation of data of experiments employing the fluorescence light technique. We discuss in detail the basic algorithms developed and illustrate the power of the method. It is shown that Monte Carlo, numerical, and hybrid air shower calculations give consistent results which agree very well with those obtained within the CORSIKA program.

Measurement of the proton-air cross section with Telescope Array’s Middle Drum detector and surface array in hybrid mode

“…Using CONEX allows us to simulate large number of showers in a very reasonable time scale. It is worth noting that the shower parameters obtained with CONEX are consistent with that obtained with CORISKA [11].…”

Composition at the ``ankle'' measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory: pure or mixed?

“…increasing them by a factor linearly growing with lg E from 1.0 at 10 15 eV to 1.5 at 10 19 eV with respect to the nominal values [21]. CONEX [22] with 3D option was used for approximate estimation of the signal in Auger stations at 1000 meters from the core. It turned out that r G is practically insensitive to the modifications of these interaction parameters decreasing only by ∆r G 0.03.…”

Cosmic Rays Energy Spectrum observed by the TALE detector using Cerenkov light

“…Simulated showers are reconstructed using the same procedure applied to real data, and event selection is done in the same way as well. A missing energy correction is applied to the reconstructed data and MC showers based on the same composition assumption, with the correction for each primary type and energy is estimated from the CONEX [13] generated showers (cross checked against CORSIKA [14] predictions). CONEX version 4.37 with QGSJet II-4 was used.…”