Speaker
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Abstract: The longitudinal development of muons in air showers provides important constraints on cosmic-ray composition and serves as a test for hadronic interaction models. In this study, the muon production depth is reconstructed by analyzing muon arrival times over an energy range of 1 PeV to 50 PeV and a zenith angle range of 10°–30°. The depth at which muon production reaches its maximum is defined as X_{max}^{\mu} ; this parameter, along with the standard deviation of its distribution (\sigma(X_{max}^{\mu})), is sensitive to the primary composition of cosmic rays. By incorporating the effects of time, core, and angular resolution, as well as muon sampling, the reconstructed X_max^\mu for proton primaries at 10^16 eV achieves a resolution of 15 g/cm² with a bias of approximately 2 g/cm². For iron primaries at the same energy, the resolution is 15 g/cm² with a bias of about 17 g/cm². In addition, the dependence of this X_{max}^{\mu} reconstruction
method on hadronic interaction models is also discussed.
