Measurement of the Muon Production Depths at the Pierre Auger Observatory

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; S. J. SCIUTTO

EPJ Plus

Springer

Año: 2016 vol. 131 p. 301 - 316

The muon content of extensive air showers is an observable sensitive to the primary compositionand to the hadronic interaction properties. The Pierre Auger Observatory uses water-Cherenkov detectorsto measure particle densities at the ground and therefore is sensitive to the muon content of air showers.We present here a method which allows us to estimate the muon production depths by exploiting themeasurement of the muon arrival times at the ground recorded with the Surface Detector of the PierreAuger Observatory. The analysis is performed in a large range of zenith angles, thanks to the capability ofestimating and subtracting the electromagnetic component, and for energies between 1019.2 and 1020 eV.