Extensive air showers and hadron interactions at ultrahigh energies

Experimental EAS data (the energy spectra of the muon and hadron components, the total number of muons and hadrons, and the mean location of the shower maximum) are compared with calculations based on different models of hadron interactions. It is shown that a unified scaling model cannot describe the set of EAS data. Instead, the model of quark-gluon strings agrees well with the experimental data when allowance is made for differences in the inclusive spectra of secondary-particle production for nucleon-nucleus and nucleon-nucleon interactions.