CORSIKA Shower Images

Compiled by Fabian Schmidt, Johannes Knapp, University of Leeds (2005), UK.

General Remarks

The pictures were generated with the CORSIKA option "PLOTSH2" together with the "map2png" program (both developed at Leeds University, and included in the CORSIKA release).

Pictures contain 3D particle tracks as traced by CORSIKA projected onto planes along CORSIKA coordinate axes (see CORSIKA User's Guide)
Particle type is encoded in track color:

red = electrons, positrons, gammas
green = muons
blue = hadrons

Color scale is logarithmic: color value = log10(1 + number of tracks), colors are mixed (red tracks + green tracks --> yellow pixel), dark color corresponds to high track density

You are invited to use these plots free of charge in theses, publications, etc..
If you do, please cite / acknowledge this website
(e.g., F. Schmidt, J. Knapp, "CORSIKA Shower Images", 2005, https://www-zeuthen.desy.de/~jknapp/fs/showerimages.html ).

Overall Shower Development

Global shower pictures for different energies, zenith angles, and projections can be found here:

Photon Showers

Proton Showers

Iron Showers

Muon Showers

The following settings were used for all shower pictures, if not stated otherwise:

Fixed first interaction height at 30 km.
Z (vertical) axis range: 0 - 30.1 km, X/Y axis range: +- 5 km around shower core
Energy cuts: 0.1 MeV (e+-, gammas) and 0.1 GeV (muons, hadrons) -- only tracks of particles with kinetic energy above these values are plotted

First Hadronic Interaction at 10^20 eV

The following pictures are zoomed in on the first hadronic interaction of the proton and iron primaries at 10^20 eV. When seen in the center-of-momentum frame, most particles produced in the interaction are emitted in the extreme forward and backward directions. Lorentz-boosted to the lab frame, particles in the backward region assume angles of <~ 90 degrees.
Note that no muons (green tracks) can be seen at this stage, as the high-energy pions produced in the interaction do not decay in the field of view. Two red tracks forming a very small angle are most probably two gammas from a neutral pion decay.

Axis ranges: 21 m in Z (vertical), 3.4 cm (!) in X/Y (horizontal)

Proton, xy-projection

Proton, xz-projection

Iron, xy-projection

Iron, xz-projection

Identifying Processes in Shower Pictures

All of the following pictures are cut-outs of global shower images (unless stated otherwise), demonstrating some of the large number of effects and processes treated by CORSIKA.

Electromagnetic Processes

Brems- strahlung	Pair-production*	Deflection in the Earth's magnetic field	Knock-on electron performing multiple scattering	Compton Scattering

* this picture was produced by simulating a 100 MeV photon with CORSIKA.

Electroweak Decays

Note that neutrinos are not traced in the CORSIKA version used, and hence do not appear as tracks.

Muon decay producing an electromagnetic subshower
Score of muon decays in outer region of inclined shower
Charged pion decay (blue track turning green)

Hadronic Interactions

Hadron-Nucleus scattering or 2-body decay
Hadron-Nucleus scattering or 2-body decay
Hadronic interaction or 4-body decay
?
Second and third hadronic interaction of a vertical 100 GeV proton shower