Studies on muon showers underground

The 4 m2 spark chamber telescope array of the Mt. Cappuccini Laboratory, Torino, At 40 m w.e. underground was operated for about 830 h recording muon showers. The data were analysed with respect to the multiplicity distribution of the shower particles, adn to local interactions initiated in the chamber absorbers. Regarding the multiplicity analysis a semi-empirical expression for the likely shower size dependence of a structure function of the analytical form proposed by Vernov et al., was derived and applied with systematically varied parameters. The comparison of the observed rates of multiples with those calculated with a variety of parameters showed that a satisfactory agreement can be attained only if one admits a variation with the shower size of the parameters, and an enhanced muon/electron ratio at the lower primary energies, possibly indicative of an increased abundance of primary heavy nuclei. This would conform with the idea of a two-component primary composition in which a pulsar-produced fraction, enriched in heavy nuclei, dominated only at medium energies. The records on multiplicative interactions, and on large-angle scattering, were analysed by comparing their rates observed for shower particles with those found in single-muon check runs. The results are consistent with the assumption that all shower particle interactions are electromagnetic in nature, and that nonconventional components like mandelas are absent. Only making extreme allowances for statistical fluctuations the data can be made compatible with a mandela flux as large as that suggested by Baruch et al., provided that the mandela attenuation length is less than 1 500g/cm2 of rock