The effect of atmospheric attenuation on inclined cosmic ray air showers

Abstract

The increasing cosmic ray statistics collected by present experiments and the future prospects with new large arrays demand accurate calculations of the extensive air shower parameters. The energy of the primary particle is estimated by ground arrays fitting a lateral distribution function (LDF) to the particle densities at a given observing level. However, the lack of appropriate parameterization for these distributions, able to reproduce the data collected from all arrival directions, makes it difficult the experimental analysis. Starting from analytical LDF for vertical showers we study the atmospheric depth dependence of the shower parameters, which is necessary to obtain the corresponding particle density distributions for inclined showers. In our approach both geometrical and atmospheric attenuation effects producing a lateral asymmetry in non-vertical showers are included. The resulting electron and muon LDF fit very well the Monte Carlo simulated data at all zenith angles.