http://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14293
Cosmic Rays (CR) impinging on the terrestrial atmosphere provide a viable opportunity to study new physics in hadron-nucleus collisions at energies covering many orders of magnitude, including a regime well beyond LHC energies. The permanent flux of primary CR can be used to estimate event rates for a given type of new physics scenario. As a step to estimate the potential for new-physics searches in CR-induced Extensive Air Showers (EAS), we here determine the total luminosity, including the contribution stemming from the cascade of secondaries in hadron-air interactions using Monte Carlo simulations of the hadronic shower component with CORSIKA~8. We show results obtained for single showers and discuss the interplay with the CR spectrum. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility to study BSM phenomenology in EAS, focusing on so-called large-multiplicity Higgs production as an explicit example and its impact on EAS observables.
O. Fischer, M. Reininghaus and R. Ulrich
Tue, 29 Dec 20
61/66
Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures; submitted to PoS(ICHEP2020)