Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Characteristics Of High Energy Particle Interactions From The Study Of Irregular Air Showers, Amir Hosein Shadkam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since the discovery of cosmic rays about one century ago, there have been two main approaches in their experimental study. The first is analyzing their arrival directions, energies, and composition in order to determine the nature of their source or sources. The second is analysis of their interactions in the atmosphere to learn about the structure of elementary particles through the characteristics of their collisions at extremely high energy. The energy available in the collisions of cosmic ray protons with atmospheric nuclei exceeds greatly that achieved or achievable in any man-made accelerators. The study of these interactions may reveal the …