Ultra-peripheral collisions of charged hadrons in extensive air showers

Abstract

We discuss the electromagnetic collisions of high energy protons, pions and kaons with atmospheric nuclei. In particular, we use the equivalent photon approximation to estimate (i) the diffractive collisions where the projectile scatters inelastically off a nucleus, and (ii) the usual radiative processes (bremsstrahlung, pair production and photonuclear interactions) of these charged hadrons in the air. We then include the processes in the simulator AIRES and study how they affect the longitudinal development of extensive air showers. For 109−11 GeV proton primaries we find that they introduce a very small reduction (below 1%) in the average value of both Xmax and ΔXmax. At a given shower age (relative slant depth from Xmax), these electromagnetic processes do not change significantly the number of muons or the total energy carried by electrons and photons, increased by just 1% the muon-to-(γ+e) signal at the ground level.