Avenues to new-physics searches in cosmic ray air showers
Abstract
Cosmic Rays (CR) impinging on the terrestrial atmosphere provide a viable opportunity to study new physics in hadron-nucleus collisions at energies covering many orders of magnitude, including a regime well beyond LHC energies. The permanent flux of primary CR can be used to estimate event rates for a given type of new physics scenario. As a step to estimate the potential for new-physics searches in CR-induced Extensive Air Showers (EAS), we here determine the total luminosity, including the contribution stemming from the cascade of secondaries in hadron-air interactions using Monte Carlo simulations of the hadronic shower component with CORSIKA~8. We show results obtained for single showers and discuss the interplay with the CR spectrum. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility to study BSM phenomenology in EAS, focusing on so-called large-multiplicity Higgs production as an explicit example and its impact on EAS observables.
- Publication:
-
40th International Conference on High Energy Physics
- Pub Date:
- April 2021
- DOI:
- 10.22323/1.390.0602
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2012.14293
- Bibcode:
- 2021chep.confE.602F
- Keywords:
-
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 6 pages, 4 figures