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Predictions of ultrahigh-energy proton-air production cross sections from accelerator data

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

Phys. Rev. D 76, 111503(R) – Published 14 December, 2007

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.76.111503

Abstract

We make new predictions of $σ_{p - air}^{prod}$ , the proton-air inelastic production cross section, at $p p$ center-of-mass energies $0.1 ≲ \sqrt{s} ≲ 100 TeV$ , using high-energy predictions from a saturated Froissart bound parametrization of accelerator data on forward $\bar{p} p$ and $p p$ scattering amplitudes, together with Glauber theory. The parametrization of the $\bar{p} p$ and $p p$ cross sections incorporates analyticity constraints and unitarity, allowing accurate extrapolations to ultrahigh energies. Our predictions are in excellent agreement with available cosmic-ray extensive air shower measurements, both in magnitude and in energy dependence.

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References (22)

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We will define “standard atmosphere” as the numerical relation given by Eq. (1), in order to have the density of nucleons needed to find the $p p$ cross section from a nuclear model of “air.” It would be useful for the experimenter to reduce his/her measurement to “standard atmosphere” so that it can be compared with other experiments, as well as with theory.
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At $\sqrt{s} = 2 TeV$ , the total cross sections $σ_{\bar{p} p}$ and $σ_{p p}$ are expected to differ by $\sim 0.01 mb$ , and thus, for the purpose of predicting $σ_{p - air}^{prod}$ , are the same—see Ref. [20].

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Predictions of ultrahigh-energy proton-air production cross sections from accelerator data

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