Simulation of extensive air showers at ultra-high energy using the CORSIKA Monte Carlo code

Extensive simulations have been carried out with CORSIKA version 5.62 to investigate the general properties of giant cosmic air shower in the energy range 1-100 EeV. The comparison between protons, heavy nuclei and gamma initiated showers exhibits unexpected and interesting features. The apparent muon electron ratio at great distances (greater than or equal to 1.5 km from axis) tends to be comparable at ultra-high energy in both photon-induced cascades and hadronic cascades (compensation between the enhancement versus energy of photo-production cross-section and of the decrease of both pair production cross-section and the bremsstrahlung cross-section, with Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect); for proton and nuclei primaries, a correlation with lateral electron profile suggests a new energy estimator, in complement to electrons size or density at 600 m, suitable for the determination of the total primary energy spectrum. Another tendency is the local contrast in the abundance of positive and negative muons (with a possible ellipticity in the lateral muon distribution) induced by the geomagnetic field, especially visible for some azimuthal and zenith angles. These distortions are more intense for heavy primaries; they can be exploited on the most favorable horizontal axis or areas, for the discrimination between nuclei and protons. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.