Diffractive Contribution to the Elasticity and the Nucleonic Flux in the Atmosphere

Abstract

We calculate the average elasticity considering non-diffractive and single diffractive interactions and perform an analysis of the cosmic-ray flux by means of an analytical solution for the nucleonic diffusion equation. We show that the diffractive contribution is important for the adequate description of the nucleonic and hadronic fluxes in the atmosphere.

Comments: 10 pages, latex, 2 figures (uuencoded PostScript)