Mass composition of cosmic rays in the range 2x1017-3x1018 eV measured with the Haverah Park array

At the Haverah Park array a number of air shower observables were measured that are relevant to the determination of the mass composition of cosmic rays. In this paper we discuss measurements of the risetime of signals in large-area water-Cherenkov detectors and of the lateral distribution function of the water-Cherenkov signal. The former are used to demonstrate that the CORSIKA code, using the QGSJET98 model, gives an adequate description of the data with a low sensitivity, in this energy range, to assumptions about primary mass. By contrast the lateral distribution is sufficiently well measured that there is mass sensitivity. We argue that in the range 0.2-1.0 EeV the data are well represented with a bi-modal composition of (34 +/- 2)% protons and the rest iron. We also discuss the systematic errors induced by the choice of hadronic model. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.