With KASCADE we have been reconstructing energy spectra and mass composition for five elements representing different mass groups of primary cosmic ray particles, and for photons, using 6 different high energy hadronic interaction models and thus helped the model builders to improve their hadronic interaction models. All the models used are implemented in CORSIKA ( COsmic Ray event SImulation for KAscade) which has been written especially for KASCADE and extended since then to become the standard simulation package in the field of cosmic ray air shower simulations.

Basically, the same applies to the COMBINED data analysis. Here the detector responses from KASCADE and GRANDE detectors were brought together and combined for a joint analysis. For COMBINED, however, only the latest high-energy models were published here, which were used as bases for our data analyses

By publishing these simulation data sets we offer the unique opportunity to compare measured data directly with simulations because both are generated in the same way i.e. using the same analysis framework with the same quality cuts applied.

Simulating air showers for KASCADE is a three-phase procedure:

CORSIKA is a detailed Monte Carlo program to study the evolution and properties of extensive air showers in the atmosphere. Protons, light nuclei up to iron, photons, and many other particles may be treated as primaries. The particles are tracked through the atmosphere until they undergo reactions with the air nuclei or - in the case of instable secondaries – decay.
The CORSIKA program allows to simulating interactions and decays of nuclei, hadrons, muons, electrons, and photons in the atmosphere up to energies of some 10²⁰eV. It gives type, energy, location, direction and arrival times of all secondary particles that are created in an air shower and pass a selected observation level. A variety of high- and low energy hadronic interaction models is implemented.
In KASCADE and the COMBINED simulations we are using up to six high energy models from three different model families:

and one low energy model

invoked when the energy of the tracked particle E_lab is below 200 GeV.

The data from these models have been made publicly available via the KCDC web portal to enable the users to perform their own mass composition analysis.

CRES (Cosmic Ray Event Simulation) is code package for the simulation of the signals / energy deposits in all detector components of KASCADE/KASCADE-Grande as response to an extensive air shower as simulated with CORSIKA. CRES has been developed, based on the GEANT3 package. CRES accepts simulated air shower data from CORSIKA as input and delivers simulated detector signals. The data structure of the CRES output is the same as from the KASCADE measurements, which means that both are analysed using the same reconstruction program KRETA.

KRETA (Kascade Reconstruction for ExTensive Airshowers) reads the simulated data’s rawfz files and reconstructs the basic shower observables, storing all the results in the form of histograms and vectors of parameters (ntuples).
The reconstruction procedure starts from the signals/energy-deposits in all detector components and determines physical quantities like the number of electrons, of muons, of hadrons, hadronic energies, arrival times, track directions and so on. It develops internally over three levels using an iterative process to come to the final results.
For KASCADE and COMBINED, however, the internal process of data analysis within KRETA is different (see KCDC Simulations Manual and KCDC-COMBINED Simulations Manual).

Unlike for measured data where we have calibration data like Air Temperature and more event information like Date and EventTime, we have in simulations some additional information on the shower properties like true primary energy and particle ID derived directly from the air shower simulation CORSIKA or from the detector simulation CRES. From about 200 observables obtained in the analysis of the simulated data we choose 34 to be published in KCDC. Ten of these parameters, called ‘Monte Carlo Information’ are representing the true shower information.
Most of the true MC parameters are derived from CORSIKA output. Only TrXc and TrYc are taken from CRES because the shower core position is randomly chosen within a pre-defined detector area when starting the detector simulation.
The number of electrons denote all electrons tracked down to the observation level by CORSIKA. The same applies for the numbers of muons, photons and hadrons.

Data Format for Simulation Quantities

Var	Name	Available Data Range	Unit	Representation
TrPE	true particle energy	1.0e14 - 3.16e18	eV	log10 -> 14.0 - 18.5
TrPP	true particle ID	14,402,1206,2814,5626		discret values
TrXc	true X core position	depending on detector	m
TrYc	true Y core position	depending on detector	m
TrZe	true zenith angle	0.0 - 42.0	°
TrAz	true azimuth angle	0.0 - 360.0	°
TrNe	true number of electrons	100.0 - 1,000,000,000.0		log10 -> 2.0 - 9.0
TrNm	true number of muons	100.0 - 100,000,000.0		log10 -> 2.0 - 8.0
TrNg	true number of photons	100.0 - 10,000,000,000.0		log10 -> 2.0 - 10.0
TrNh	true number of hadrons	10.0 - 10,000,000.0		log10 -> 1.0 - 7.0

 

QGSjet
QGSJET (Quark Gluon String model with JETs) is an extension of the QGS model, which describes hadronic interactions on the basis of exchanging supercritical Pomerons. Additionally QGSJET includes minijets to describe the hard interactions which are important at the highest energies. The most actual version is QGSJET-II-04 including Pomeron loop and the cross-section is tuned to LHC data.

EPOS
EPOS (Energy conserving quantum mechanical multi-scattering approach, based on Partons, Off-shell remnants and Splitting parton ladders) uses the universality hypothesis to treat the high energy interactions enabling a safe extrapolation up to higher energies.

SIBYLL
SIBYLL is a program developed to simulate hadronic interactions at extreme high energies based on the QCD mini-jet model.

FLUKA
FLUKA (FLUctuating KAscade) is a package of routines to follow energetic particles through matter by the Monte Carlo method. In combination with CORSIKA only that part is used which describes the low-energy hadronic interactions. FLUKA is used within CORSIKA to calculate the inelastic hadron cross-sections with the components of air and to perform their interaction and secondary particle production, including many details of the de-excitation of the target nucleus.
FLUKA is invoked when the lab energy of a tracked particle drops below 200 GeV.

For KASCADE we have simulated 5 different primaried representing 5 different mass groups:

Only registered users have access to the simulation download pages. If you are not yet registered you can click here to create a new account.

KCDC OPEN -BETA - VERSION QUALOR 2.1 based on: KAOS (2.0.0)