Hadronic Interactions at ultra-high energies - tests with the Pierre Auger Observatory

S. J. SCIUTTO; THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; SOFIA ANDRINGA

Congreso; EDS Blois; 2017

The Pierre Auger Observatory is a hybrid detector for cosmic rays with E > 1 EeV.From the gathered data we estimated the proton-proton cross-section at √s = 55 TeVand tested other features of the hadronic interaction models, which use extrapolationsfrom the LHC energy. The electromagnetic component, carrying most of the energyof the shower, is precisely measured using fluorescence telescopes, while the hadronicbackbone of the shower is indirectly tested by measuring the muons arriving to thesurface detector. The analyses show that models fail to describe these two componentsconsistently, predicting too few muons at the ground.