Principal components analysis of extensive air showers applied to the identification of cosmic TeV gamma-rays

Abstract

We apply a principal components analysis (PCA) to the secondary particle density distributions at ground level produced by cosmic gamma-rays and protons. For this purpose, high-energy interactions of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere and the resulting extensive air showers have been simulated by means of the CORSIKA Monte Carlo code. We show that a PCA of the two-dimensional particle density fluctuations provides a decreasing sequence of covariance matrix eigenvalues that have typical features of a polynomial law, which are different for different primary cosmic rays. This property is applied to the separation of electromagnetic showers from proton simulated extensive air showers, and it is proposed as a new discrimination method that can be used experimentally for gamma-proton separation. A cutting parameter related to the polynomial behavior of the decreasing sequence of covariance matrix eigenvalues is calculated, and the efficiency of the cutting procedure for gamma-proton separation is evaluated.