arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to L. Cazon.
An analytical description of the time structure of the pulses induced by muons in air showers at ground level is deduced assuming the production distance distribution for the muons can be obtained elsewhere. The results of this description are compared against those obtained from simulated showers using AIRES. Major contributions to muon time delays are identified and a relation between the time structure and the depth distribution is unveiled.
At the Haverah Park Array a number of air shower observables were measured that are relevant to the determination of the mass composition of cosmic rays. In this paper we discuss measurements of the risetime of signals in large area water-Cherenkov detectors and of the lateral distribution function of the water-Cherenkov signal. The former are used to demonstrate that the CORSIKA code, using the QGSJET98 model, gives an adequate description of the data with a low sensitivity, in this energy range, to assumptions about primary mass. By contrast the lateral distribution is sufficiently well measured that there is mass sensitivity. We argue that in the range 0.2-1.0 EeV the data are well represented with a bi-modal composition of 34+-2 % protons and the rest iron. We also discuss the systematic errors induced by the choice of hadronic model.