Avenues to new-physics searches in cosmic ray air showers. (arXiv:2012.14293v1 [hep-ph])

Avenues to new-physics searches in cosmic ray air showers. (arXiv:2012.14293v1 [hep-ph])
<a href="http://arxiv.org/find/hep-ph/1/au:+Fischer_O/0/1/0/all/0/1">Oliver Fischer</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/hep-ph/1/au:+Reininghaus_M/0/1/0/all/0/1">Maximilian Reininghaus</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/hep-ph/1/au:+Ulrich_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">Ralf Ulrich</a>

Cosmic Rays (CR) impinging on the terrestrial atmosphere provide a viable
opportunity to study new physics in hadron-nucleus collisions at energies
covering many orders of magnitude, including a regime well beyond LHC energies.
The permanent flux of primary CR can be used to estimate event rates for a
given type of new physics scenario. As a step to estimate the potential for
new-physics searches in CR-induced Extensive Air Showers (EAS), we here
determine the total luminosity, including the contribution stemming from the
cascade of secondaries in hadron-air interactions using Monte Carlo simulations
of the hadronic shower component with CORSIKA~8. We show results obtained for
single showers and discuss the interplay with the CR spectrum. Furthermore, we
discuss the possibility to study BSM phenomenology in EAS, focusing on
so-called large-multiplicity Higgs production as an explicit example and its
impact on EAS observables.

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