Measurement of the depth of maximum muon production and of its fluctuations in extensive air showers above 1.5x10^19 eV at the Pierre Auger Observatory

S. J. SCIUTTO; THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; M. MALLAMACI

Conferencia; ICRC2017; 2017

The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory measures the arrival time distributionof particles, providing indirect information on the longitudinal development of the muoniccomponent of extensive air showers. In this work, the depth at which the muon production ismaximum and the corresponding fluctuations are reconstructed for more than 2000 events above1.5×1019 eV, in a wide range of zenith angles, between 45◦ and 65◦. Both observables are exploitedto gain insight about the most up-to-date hadronic interactions models, which are usedin the simulation of extensive air showers. By constraining the models, these observables couldallow one to obtain better information on high energy hadronic interactions, and therefore theycould indirectly help for the mass composition study of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, one of themost intriguing issues of modern astrophysics.