Charm particle production in High Energy Cosmic Ray Showers using CORSIKA

Abstract

Cosmic Ray Showers have been an active area of research ever since their first discovery. Until resently simulations where unable to include heavy quarks as a part of the shower. In this thesis I research the influence of the charm quark on the transverse momentum distribution of muons, electrons, photons and neutrino's for various primairy particle energies using the CORSIKA simulation program. From this we can calculate the ratio of the muon momenta to photon+electron momenta. Using the HiSparc project this ratio can be determained from observed data. If charm particles have an effect on this ratio the HiSparc project can observe this.