Strange fireball as an explanation of the muon excess in Auger data

Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378271%3A_____%2F17%3A00539900" target="_blank" >RIV/68378271:_____/17:00539900 - isvavai.cz</a>

Výsledek na webu

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.063005" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.063005</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.063005" target="_blank" >10.1103/PhysRevD.95.063005</a>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

Strange fireball as an explanation of the muon excess in Auger data

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

We argue that ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray collisions in Earth's atmosphere can probe the strange quark density of the nucleon. These collisions have center-of-mass energies greater than or similar to 10(4.6)A GeV, where A >= 14 is the nuclear baryon number. We hypothesize the formation of a deconfined thermal fireball which undergoes a sudden hadronization. At production the fireball has a very high matter density and consists of gluons and two flavors of light quarks (u, d). Because the fireball is formed in the baryon-rich projectile fragmentation region, the high baryochemical potential damps the production of uu and dd pairs, resulting in gluon fragmentation mainly into ss. The strange quarks then become much more abundant and upon hadronization the relative density of strange hadrons is significantly enhanced over that resulting from a hadron gas. Assuming the momentum distribution functions can be approximated by Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics, we estimate a kaon-to-pion ratio of about 3 and expect a similar (total) baryon-topion ratio. We show that, if this were the case, the excess of strange hadrons would suppress the fraction of energy which is transferred to decaying pi(0)'s by about 20%, yielding an similar to 40% enhancement of the muon content in atmospheric cascades, in agreement with recent data reported by the Pierre Auger Collaboration.

Název v anglickém jazyce

Strange fireball as an explanation of the muon excess in Auger data

Popis výsledku anglicky

We argue that ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray collisions in Earth's atmosphere can probe the strange quark density of the nucleon. These collisions have center-of-mass energies greater than or similar to 10(4.6)A GeV, where A >= 14 is the nuclear baryon number. We hypothesize the formation of a deconfined thermal fireball which undergoes a sudden hadronization. At production the fireball has a very high matter density and consists of gluons and two flavors of light quarks (u, d). Because the fireball is formed in the baryon-rich projectile fragmentation region, the high baryochemical potential damps the production of uu and dd pairs, resulting in gluon fragmentation mainly into ss. The strange quarks then become much more abundant and upon hadronization the relative density of strange hadrons is significantly enhanced over that resulting from a hadron gas. Assuming the momentum distribution functions can be approximated by Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics, we estimate a kaon-to-pion ratio of about 3 and expect a similar (total) baryon-topion ratio. We show that, if this were the case, the excess of strange hadrons would suppress the fraction of energy which is transferred to decaying pi(0)'s by about 20%, yielding an similar to 40% enhancement of the muon content in atmospheric cascades, in agreement with recent data reported by the Pierre Auger Collaboration.

Druh

J_imp - Článek v periodiku v databázi Web of Science

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

10303 - Particles and field physics

Projekt

—

Návaznosti

—

Rok uplatnění

2017

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název periodika

Physical Review D

ISSN

2470-0010

e-ISSN

—

Svazek periodika

95

Číslo periodika v rámci svazku

6

Stát vydavatele periodika

US - Spojené státy americké

Počet stran výsledku

14

Strana od-do

1-14

Kód UT WoS článku

000396031400002

EID výsledku v databázi Scopus

2-s2.0-85020137441