Volume 501 - 39th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2025) - Cosmic-Ray Indirect
Measurements of the variance of the logarithmic mass of cosmic rays from 0.3 to 30 PeV with LHAASO-KM2A
X. Feng*, C. Feng, H. Zhang, L. Ma  on behalf of the LHAASO Collaboration
*: corresponding author
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: September 25, 2025
Published on: December 30, 2025
Abstract
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) has accomplished comprehensive and precise measurements of very-high-energy cosmic ray air showers. For the first time, the logarithmic shower muon number has been employed to derive the mean logarithmic mass ($\langle \ln A \rangle$) of cosmic rays, while fluctuations in the logarithmic shower muon number have been utilized to construct the variance of the logarithmic mass ($\sigma_{\ln A}^{2}$). The analysis provides a clear depiction of the cosmic ray mass composition evolution with energy and explicitly illustrates the energy-dependent trend of $\sigma_{\ln A}^{2}$. The reliability of this parameterization method has been validated by employing simulations based on three different hadronic interaction models (QGSJET-II-04, EPOS-LHC, and SIBYLL 2.3d) with various cosmic ray compositions. The results demonstrate excellent consistency between the simulated input values of $\langle \ln A \rangle$ and $\sigma_{\ln A}^{2}$ and those derived from the parameterization, thus confirming the robustness and accuracy of this approach.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.501.0251
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