Cosmic ray shower simulations and the primary energy spectrum above 1017eV

Abstract

The consequences of applying the model for air shower development suggested by Gaisser (1974) to primaries of energy 10¹⁷-10¹⁸ eV are investigated. It is shown that there is as good agreement between the predictions from this model with observations of average shower characteristics as there was between the observations and earlier simulation data based upon simple models for high-energy interactions. The effects of adopting the Gaisser model on the conversion of observational data to the primary particle energy spectrum are considered.