Cosmic ray signals from mini black holes in models with extra dimensions: an analytical/Monte Carlo study

It is shown that the partial and total multiplicities and the lateral distributions of the shower particles can distinguish between events produced by the evaporation of mini black holes from normal ones with the same energy due, for instance, to a primary-proton - nucleon collision. The analysis is performed via a large scale simulation of the resulting cascades in the two cases over the entire range (1015-1019 eV) of ultra high energies, for several values of the number of large extra dimensions, for a variety of altitudes of the initial interaction and with the energy losses in the bulk taken into account. The electromagnetic/hadronic ratio is strongly fluctuating and, thus, not conclusive for the altitudes considered. The relevance of these results to a possible black hole interpretation of the Centauro events is commented upon