Hadronic physics with the Pierre Auger Observatory

L. CAZON; THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; S. J. SCIUTTO

Gallipoli

Seminario; Cosmic Ray International Seminar 2015; 2015

Extensive air showers are the result of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic rays at ultra-highenergy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the fine details ofhadronic interactions. Ultra-high energy cosmic rays can be used to experimentally extend our knowledge on hadronicinteractions in energy and kinematic regions beyond those tested by human-made accelerators.We report on how the Pierre Auger Observatory is able to measure the proton-air cross section for particle productionat a center-of-mass energy per nucleon of 39 TeV and 56 TeV and also to constrain the new hadronic interactionmodels tuned after the results of the Large Hadron Collider, by measuring: the average shape of the electromagneticlongitudinal profile of air showers, the moments of the distribution of the depth at which they reach their maximum,and the content and production depth of muons in air showers with a primary center-of-mass energy per nucleonaround and above the 100 TeV scale.