Testing of the EPOS LHC, QGSJET01, QGSJETII-03 and QGSJETII-04 hadronic interaction models via help of the atmospheric vertical muon spectra

Abstract

The recent results of the very precise measurements of the primary cosmic protons and helium nuclei energy spectra by AMS-02 and some rather accurate estimates of these energy spectra generated in SNR allow us to elaborate the new approximation of the pimary nucleon energy spectra. As the acuracy of this approximation is rather high we can use it to test various models of hadronic interactions with the help of atmospheric muon energy spectra. The atmospheric vertical muon energy spectra have been calcullated in terms of the EPOS LHC, QGSJET01, QGSJETII-03 and QGSJETII-04 models in the energy range 10² ÷ 10⁵ GeV with help of the CORSIKA package and this new approximation of the primary nucleon spectrum. The comparison of calculations with the muon spectra observed by collaborations L3+Cosmic, LVD and MACRO has shown that all models predict approximately two times lower intensity of the muon energy spectra. As these muons are products of decays of the most energetic π ^± and K ^± mesons in the atmosphere, we can conclude that production of these π ^± and K ^± mesons is underestimated by EPOS LHC, QGSJET01, QGSJETII-03 and QGSJETII-04 models.