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dc.contributor.authorALICE Collaboration
dc.date.accessioned2016-03-16T07:09:08Z
dc.date.available2016-03-16T07:09:08Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.identifier.citationALICE Collaboration. (2016). Study of cosmic ray events with high muon multiplicity using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. <i>Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics</i>, <i>2016</i>(1), Article 032. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/01/032" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/01/032</a>
dc.identifier.otherCONVID_25572645
dc.identifier.otherTUTKAID_69315
dc.identifier.urihttps://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/49058
dc.description.abstractALICE is one of four large experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, specially designed to study particle production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Located 52 meters underground with 28 meters of overburden rock, it has also been used to detect muons produced by cosmic ray interactions in the upper atmosphere. In this paper, we present the multiplicity distribution of these atmospheric muons and its comparison with Monte Carlo simulations. This analysis exploits the large size and excellent tracking capability of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber. A special emphasis is given to the study of high multiplicity events containing more than 100 reconstructed muons and corresponding to a muon areal density ρµ > 5.9 m−2 . Similar events have been studied in previous underground experiments such as ALEPH and DELPHI at LEP. While these experiments were able to reproduce the measured muon multiplicity distribution with Monte Carlo simulations at low and intermediate multiplicities, their simulations failed to describe the frequency of the highest multiplicity events. In this work we show that the high multiplicity events observed in ALICE stem from primary cosmic rays with energies above 1016 eV and that the frequency of these events can be successfully described by assuming a heavy mass composition of primary cosmic rays in this energy range. The development of the resulting air showers was simulated using the latest version of QGSJET to model hadronic interactions. This observation places significant constraints on alternative, more exotic, production mechanisms for these events.
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherInstitute of Physics Publishing Ltd.; Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
dc.relation.ispartofseriesJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
dc.subject.othercosmic rays
dc.subject.otheratmospheric muons
dc.subject.otherALICE detector
dc.titleStudy of cosmic ray events with high muon multiplicity using the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
dc.typearticle
dc.identifier.urnURN:NBN:fi:jyu-201603021756
dc.contributor.laitosFysiikan laitosfi
dc.contributor.laitosDepartment of Physicsen
dc.type.urihttp://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle
dc.date.updated2016-03-02T13:15:03Z
dc.type.coarjournal article
dc.description.reviewstatuspeerReviewed
dc.relation.issn1475-7516
dc.relation.numberinseries1
dc.relation.volume2016
dc.type.versionpublishedVersion
dc.rights.copyright© 2016 CERN for the benefit of ALICE Collaboration. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
dc.rights.accesslevelopenAccessfi
dc.rights.urlhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
dc.relation.doi10.1088/1475-7516/2016/01/032


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© 2016 CERN for the benefit of ALICE Collaboration. Content
from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2016 CERN for the benefit of ALICE Collaboration. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.