Angular distributions of cherenkov photons in extensive air showers of gamma and proton primaries

Abstract

Some features of the angular distributions of Cherenkov photons in extensive air showers have been studied using the CORSIKA simulation package. The objective of this study is to see the patterns of the angular distributions of Cherenkov photons produced in extensive air showers of vertically incident γ-ray and proton primaries for different high energy hadronic interactionmodels. Such study is important in the ground based γ-ray astronomy for an effective rejection of huge cosmic ray background. It is found that the angular distribution profiles for both primaries at different energies are almost independent of hadronic interaction model, but these profiles have different behaviours for γ-ray and proton initiated showers.