Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 85: Cosmic Rays IV

T 85.4: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2026, 17:00–17:15, KS 00.006

Testing newly released hadronic interaction models with KASCADE-Grande — •Donghwa Kang and Andreas Haungs for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration — Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

KASCADE-Grande was designed to study the energy spectrum and mass composition of cosmic rays in the energy range from 10 PeV up to 1 EeV. The measurements revealed a knee-like structure in the heavy components at energies around 100 PeV, consistent with expectations from rigidity-dependent scenarios. In addition, a spectral hardening was observed in the light component near 120 PeV. With the recent release of updated post-LHC hadronic interaction models - QGSJet-III-01, EPOS.LHC-R, and Sibyll 2.3d - we test their validity using KASCADE-Grande data. In this contribution, we present the reconstructed all-particle energy spectra as well as the energy spectra of individual mass groups derived from shower size observables, using the newly released hadronic interaction models.

Keywords: energy spectrum; mass composition; hadronic interaction models; KASCADE-Grande