Fingerprint of Tsallis statistics in cosmic ray showers

Abstract

We investigate the impact of the Tsallis non extensive statistics introduced by intrinsic temperature fluctuations in p-Air ultra high energy interactions on observables of cosmic ray showers, such as the slant depth of the maximum Xmax and the muon number on the ground $n_{\mu }$. The results show that these observables are significantly affected by temperature fluctuations and agree qualitatively with the Heitler model predictions.

Comments: 11 pages, 3 figures containing 2 panels each one