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The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest particle detector in the
world. It was built to detect and study extensive air showers that are
initiated by protons or nuclei reaching Earth's atmosphere with energies
exceeding 10**18 eV (ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR)).
The center-of-mass energy of the initial interaction of the CRs in the
atmosphere exceeds the energies reached at the LHC by more than an order
of magnitude!
One of the key results of Auger is the discovery that these interactions
of UHECRs do not behave as expected.
Compared to simulations the measured air showers contain many more muons
(so-called muon puzzle).
This discrepancy could be simply due to the uncertainty inherent in the
extrapolation from the energy scale of the LHC, where we can measure
interactions in detail, to UHECR energies. Or it could be new physics!
In this seminar the recent measurement of the shower-to-shower
fluctuations in the muon content will be presented. As these
fluctuations are driven by the quantum fluctuations in the first UHE
interaction they are sensitive to new physics and the details of
hadronic interactions alike and serve to distinguish scenarios for the
muon puzzle.
Youtube URL :: https://youtu.be/sTb_b_I2vuI