Speaker
Description
Muon puzzle is a growing with cosmic ray energy excess of muons in EAS in comparison with simulations performed using various models of hadron interactions and even assuming a heavy composition of cosmic rays. The main contribution to investigation of the energy dependence of the muon excess was done by NEVOD-DECOR experiment. To separate two possible reasons of muon excess appearance (cosmophysical or nuclear-physical ones), measurements of the energy deposit of muon bundles are required. Such experiment is conducted at the NEVOD-DECOR complex, and the first results evident in favor of the nuclear-physical reason. But both detectors NEVOD and DECOR have some drawbacks: non-symmetric arrangement of modules of PMTs in Cherenkov water detector NEVOD and small area (about 70 sq. m) and insufficient spatial accuracy of muon track measurements (~ 1 cm) in coordinate-tracking detection DECOR. Nowadays, the complex is being complemented with a new coordinate detector TREK with area 250 sq.m based on multiwire drift chambers that will have spatial accuracy of 1 mm. In parallel, modernization of the Cherenkov water detector NEVOD will be fulfilled. NEVOD-DECOR-TREK complex will allow us investigate the muon component of inclined extensive air showers in a very wide energy region from 10^14 to 10^19 eV and to solve the muon puzzle by means of simultaneous measurements of the number of muons in DECOR-TREK system and their energy deposit in Cherenkov water calorimeter NEVOD.
