Muon Puzzle: Bridging the gap between cosmic ray and accelerator experiments

Abstract

Multiple cosmic ray experiments have observed that the various high-energy physics models are unable to explain the muon multiplicities at very high primary energies. The models consistently predict lower numbers as compared to what is experimentally observed. This is termed as the “muon puzzle", as model tuning cannot resolve this issue. A possible solution proposed is the formation of quark-gluon plasma which invariantly produce more strange particles that decays into muons. We explore the electromagnetic to hadronic energy fraction in the final state particles and compare it with the strangeness production over different systems and energies used at the Large Hadron Collider using various models like EPOS LHC, SYBILL 2.3d, QGSJET II-04 and PYTHIA. The results will be presented with an outlook in view of the recently proposed OO and pO collisions at LHC. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons.