Interpretation of Cosmic Ray Jets

Abstract

Cosmic-ray jets are interpreted as being due to the creation of a more or less cylindrical penetration tunnel in the nucleus. An estimate of the energy transfer to the residual nucleus is made and it is shown that this arises mainly from the surface energy of the tunnel. The order of magnitude found accounts for the relatively small number of heavy tracks NH observed. The fluctuations of NH are also in rough agreement with the observations. The variation of the shower size ns is largely due to the variation of the tunnel length d, but there are also substantial fluctuations of ns for a given d. The upper limit of ns is due to the maximum tunnel length in AgBr, and is, above a certain energy, independent of the primary energy. The values of ns can be obtained (in agreement with the facts) from a purely plural or a suitable mixed plural-multiple model for meson production.