Study of the chemical composition of high energy cosmic rays using the muon LDF of EAS between 10^{17.25} eV and 10^{17.75} eV

A. TAPIA; D. MELO; F. SÁNCHEZ; A. SEDOSKI CROCE; A. ETCHEGOYEN; J. M. FIGUEIRA; B. GARCÍA; N. GONZÁLEZ; M. JOSEBACHUILI; D. RAVIGNANI; B. WUNDHEILER

Encuentro; Gravitation, Astrophysics, and Cosmology II Argentinian-Brazilian Meeting; 2014

We explore the feasibility of estimating primary cosmic ray composition at high energies from the study of different parameters of Extensive Air Showers (EAS) at ground and underground level with Monte Carlo simulations. Using a lateral distribution function, we fit the muon density of EAS simulated to find the slope of this function. We also study the number of muons at a certain distance of the shower core. The primary mass discrimination with the merit factor for each parameter distribution is discussed in this work. The analysis considers three different primary particles (proton, iron and gamma), four different zenith angles (0◦ , 15◦ , 30◦ and 45◦ ) and primary energies of 10^{17.25} eV, 10^{17.50} eV and 10^{17.75} eV.