Abstract
We present a comprehensive study of TeV black hole events in Earth's atmosphere originated by cosmic rays of very high energy. An advanced fortran Monte Carlo code is developed and used to simulate black hole extensive air showers from ultrahigh-energy neutrino-nucleon interactions. We investigate the characteristics of these events, compare the black hole air showers to standard model air showers, and test different theoretical and phenomenological models of black hole formation and evolution. The main features of black hole air showers are found to be independent of the model considered. No significant differences between models are likely to be observed at fluorescence telescopes and/or ground arrays. We also discuss the tau "double-bang" signature in black hole air showers. We find that the energy deposited in the second bang is too small to produce a detectable peak. Our results show that the theory of TeV-scale black holes in ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays leads to robust predictions, but the fine prints of new physics are hardly to be investigated through atmospheric black hole events in the near future.
Recommended Citation
E. Ahn and M. Cavaglia, "Simulations of Black Hole Air Showers in Cosmic Ray Detectors," Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, vol. 73, no. 4, American Physical Society (APS), Feb 2006.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.73.042002
Department(s)
Physics
Sponsor(s)
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
University of Mississippi
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1550-7998
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2006 American Physical Society (APS), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Feb 2006
Comments
This research was supported (in part) by Grant No. NSF PHY-0114422 and a University of Mississippi FRP grant.