arXiv subjects

T. K. Gaisser

Publications and source records attributed to T. K. Gaisser.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2002

Atmospheric shower fluctuations and the constant intensity cut method

We explore the constant intensity cut method that is widely used for the derivation of the cosmic ray energy spectrum, for comparisons of data obtained at different atmospheric depths, for measuring average shower profiles, and for estimates of the proton-air cross section from extensive air shower data. The constant intensity cut method is based on the selection of air showers by charged particle or muon size and therefore is subject to intrinsic shower fluctuations. We demostrate that, depending on the selection method, shower fluctuations can strongly influence the characteristics of the selected showers. Furthermore, a mixture of different primaries in the cosmic ray flux complicates the interpretation of measurements based on the method of constant intensity cuts. As an example we consider data published by the Akeno Collaboration. The interpretation of the Akeno measurements suggests that more than 60-70% of cosmic ray primaries in the energy range 10^{16}-19^{17} eV are heavy nuclei. Our conclusions depend only weakly on the hadronic interaction model chosen to perform the simulations, namely SIBYLL and QGSjet.

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arXiv2002

Hybrid simulations of extensive air showers

We present a fast one dimensional hybrid method to efficiently simulate extensive air showers up to the highest observed energies. Based on precalculated pion showers and a bootstrap technique, our method predicts the average shower profile, the number of muons at detector level above several energy thresholds as well as the fluctuations of the electromagnetic and hadronic components of the shower. We study the main characteristics of proton-induced air showers up to ultra-high energy, comparing the predictions of three different hadronic interaction models: SIBYLL 1.7, SIBYLL 2.1 and QGSjet98. The influence of the hadronic interaction models on the shower evolution, in particular the elongation rate, is discussed and the applicability of analytical approximations is investigated.

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arXiv2002

Flux of Atmospheric Neutrinos

Atmospheric neutrinos produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere are of interest for several reasons. As a beam for studies of neutrino oscillations they cover a range of parameter space hitherto unexplored by accelerator neutrino beams. The atmospheric neutrinos also constitute an important background and calibration beam for neutrino astronomy and for the search for proton decay and other rare processes. Here we review the literature on calculations of atmospheric neutrinos over the full range of energy, but with particular attention to the aspects important for neutrino oscillations. Our goal is to assess how well the properties of atmospheric neutrinos are known at present.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2000

Atmospheric Neutrino Flux: A Review of Calculations

Interpretation and understanding of the evidence for neutrino oscillations depends on knowledge of the atmospheric neutrino beam. In this talk I assess how well various features are known. The goal is to determine to what extent uncertainties in the neutrino beam may limit the conclusions about neutrino properties and which features of the evidence for neutrino oscillations are most robust.

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arXiv1999

Pion production in proton collisions with light nuclei: implications for atmospheric neutrinos

Differences among calculations of the atmospheric neutrino beam can be traced in large part to differences in the representation of pion production by protons interacting with nuclei in the atmosphere. In this paper we review the existing data with the goal of determining the regions of phase space in which new measurements could help to improve the input to the calculations.

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arXiv1998

Geomagnetic Effects on Atmospheric Neutrinos

Geomagnetic effects distort the zenith angle distribution of sub--GeV and few--GeV atmospheric neutrinos, breaking the up--down symmetry that would be present in the absence of neutrino oscillations and without a geomagnetic field. The geomagnetic effects also produce a characteristic azimuthal dependence of the $ν$--fluxes, related to the well known east--west effect, that should be detectable in neutrino experiments of sufficiently large mass. We discuss these effects quantitatively. Because the azimuthal dependence is in first order independent of any oscillation effect, it is a useful diagnostic tool for studying possible systematic effects in the search for neutrino oscillations.

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arXiv1998

Proton-proton Cross Section at sqrt(s) \sim 30 TeV

There are both theoretical and experimental uncertainties in using data from cosmic-ray air showers to estimate hadronic cross sections above accelerator energies. We outline these problems and compare the physics used to extract σ_{pp}^{tot} from air shower data to the widely used parameterization of the proton-proton cross section of Donnachie and Landshoff and other contemporary models. We conclude that the published cosmic-ray cross section values do not strongly constrain σ_{pp}^{tot} fits from lower energy accelerator data.

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arXiv1997

Pathlength distribution of atmospheric neutrinos

We present the distribution of the production heights of atmsopheric neutrinos as a function of zenith angle and neutrino energy. The distributions can be used as the input for evaluation of neutrino propagation under various hypotheses for neutrino flavor oscillations.

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arXiv1997

Neutrino Astronomy: Physics Goals, Detector Parameters

This is a review of high energy neutrino astronomy that might be done with a kilometer-scale detector. The emphasis is on diffuse neutrinos of extragalactic origin and their relation to possible sources of the highest energy cosmic rays, such as active galaxies, cosmological gamma-ray burst sources and topological defects.

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arXiv1997

Gamma-ray production in supernova remnants

The bulk of the cosmic rays up to about 100 TeV are thought to be accelerated by the 1st order Fermi mechanism at supernova shocks, producing a power-law spectrum. Both electrons and protons should be accelerated, but their ratio on acceleration is not well known. Recently, the EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory has observed supernova remnants IC 443 and $γ$ Cygni at GeV energies. On the assumption that the observed gamma-rays are produced by accelerated particles in the remnants (rather than, for example, from a central compact object) we model the contributions due to pion production, bremsstrahlung, and inverse Compton scattering on the cosmic microwave, diffuse galactic radiation, and locally produced radiation fields. In the case of the same spectral index for both electrons and nuclei, and a cut-off at 80 TeV, we find that a spectral index of accelerated particles close to 2.4, and a ratio of electrons to protons in the range 0.2 to 0.3, gives a good fit to the observed spectra. For lower cut-off energies flatter spectra are possible. We also investigate the case where the electron spectrum is steeper than that of nuclei. We discuss the implications of our results for observations at air shower energies, and for the propagation of cosmic rays.

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arXiv1997

Inelasticity in p-nucleus collisions and its application to high energy cosmic-ray cascades

We employ a simple multiple scattering model to investigate the inclusive reaction p + A --> p + X for projectile momenta in the 100-200 GeV/c range. We find that data are consistent with a class of interaction models in which the stopping power of nuclei is rather low. We discuss extrapolation to ultra-high energy and the application to interpretation of cosmic-ray air showers at energies up to 10^20 eV.

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arXiv1996

Some Comments on Models of Hadronic Interactions at Air Shower Energies

Several models of minimum-bias hadronic interactions at ultra-high energy that have been used for calculations of air showers share essential common features. In this talk I review these common elements and discuss some consequences. I concentrate on properties of hadron-nucleus interactions, and I use mean depth of shower maximum as a function of primary energy to illustrate my main points. I will contrast these models with models that use a more naive treatment of hadronic interactions in nuclei but which have been successfully used to interpret measurements of depth of shower maximum.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1996

Review of Atmospheric Neutrinos

In this talk I review measurements and calculations of the flux of neutrinos produced by interactions of cosmic rays in the atmosphere. The main reason for interest in this subject is the apparent anomaly between the predicted and the observed ratio of $ν_e$ to $ν_μ$. With the advent of Super-Kamiokande, we are on the threshold of an order of magnitude increase in the amount of data available to study the problem. My goal in this talk is to describe the current status of the subject, both for contained events and for neutrino-induced upward muons.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1996

Comparison of Atmospheric Neutrino Flux Calculations at Low Energies

We compare several different calculations of the atmospheric neutrino flux in the energy range relevant for contained neutrino interactions, and we identify the major sources of difference among the calculations. We find nothing that would affect the predicted ratio of $ν_e/ν_μ$, which is nearly the same in all calculations. Significant differences in normalization arise primarily from different treatment of pion production by interactions of protons in the atmosphere. Different assumptions about the primary spectrum and treatment of the geomagnetic field are also of some importance.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1995

Atmospheric neutrino flux above 1 GeV

In this paper we extend an earlier calculation of the flux of atmospheric neutrinos to higher energy. The earlier calculation of the neutrino flux below 3 GeV has been used for calculation of the rate of contained neutrino interactions in deep underground detectors. The fluxes are needed up to neutrino energies of 10 TeV to calculate the expected rate of neutrino-induced muons passing into and through large, deep detectors. We compare our results with several other calculations, and we evaluate the uncertainty in the rate of neutrino-induced muons due to uncertainties in the neutrino flux.

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arXiv1995

The Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays

Motivated by recent measurements of the major components of the cosmic radiation around 10 TeV/nucleon and above, we discuss the phenomenology of a model in which there are two distinct kinds of cosmic ray accelerators in the galaxy. Comparison of the spectra of hydrogen and helium up to 100 TeV per nucleon suggests that these two elements do not have the same spectrum of magnetic rigidity over this entire region and that these two dominant elements therefore receive contributions from different sources.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1994

Particle Physics with High Energy Neutrinos

The topic of this review is the particle astrophysics of high energy neutrinos. High energy is defined as $E_ν > 100$~MeV. Main topics include: -- atmospheric neutrinos and muons from $π$, $K$ and charm decay. They probe uncharted territory in neutrino oscillations and constitute both the background and calibration of high energy neutrino telescopes, -- sources of high energy neutrino beams: the galactic plane, the sun, X-ray binaries, supernova remnants and interactions of extra-galactic cosmic rays with background photons, -- an extensive review of the mechanisms by which active galaxies may produce high energy particle beams, -- high energy neutrino signatures of cold dark matter and, -- a brief review of detection techniques (water and ice Cherenkov detectors, surface detectors, radio- and acoustic detectors, horizontal airshower arrays) and the instruments under construction.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1993

Calculated Electron Fluxes at Airplane Altitudes

A precision measurement of atmospheric electron fluxes has been performed on a Japanese commercial airliner (Enomoto, {\it et al.}, 1991). We have performed a monte carlo calculation of the cosmic ray secondary electron fluxes expected in this experiment. The monte carlo uses the hadronic portion of our neutrino flux cascade program combined with the electromagnetic cascade portion of the CERN library program GEANT. Our results give good agreement with the data, provided we boost the overall normalization of the primary cosmic ray flux by 12\% over the normalization used in the neutrino flux calculation.

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