Overview
In this chapter we focus our attention first on the purely electromagnetic (EM) component (electrons, i.e., negatrons and positrons, and photons). We discuss the lateral density distribution of the EM component as derived in Chap. 4, including the classical NKG lateral distribution functions and a variety of other theoretical and empirically modified functions that are also applicable to the bulk of shower particles. We subsequently expand the scope to include all charged shower particles, most of which consist of electrons with some percentage of muon contamination and converted photons, as they are recorded by thin charged particle shower detectors. A variety of experimental data of the different EM components are discussed and presented that include energy spectra, energy flow, mean energy, the photon–electron ratio, and the charge ratio of the electronic component as well as some temporal characteristics.
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Notes
- 1.
We call EM cascades initiated by individual photons or electrons in an air shower that contribute to the total shower sub-cascades or sub-showers.
- 2.
Some authors claim that the measured distributions drop off faster than predicted, others claim an opposite behavior.
- 3.
This observation is in contradiction to a later statement made by Nagano et al. (2000) (see Sect. 8.10) where a more rapid drop of the particle density was noticed.
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Grieder, P.K. (2010). Electrons and Photons. In: Extensive Air Showers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76941-5_15
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