Cosmic multi-muon bundles measured at DELPHI

Abstract

The DELPHI detector at LEP, located 100 $m$ underground, has been used to detect the multi-muon bundles by cathode readout of its hadron calorimeter and its tracking detectors (TPC, muon chambers). The experimental apparatus allows us to study muon bundles originating from primary cosmic particles with energies in the interval $10^{14}$ - $10^{17} eV$. The cosmic events registered during the years 1999 and 2000 correspond roughly to $1.6 10^6 s$ of effective run time. The aim of the work is to compare the measured muon multiplicity distributions and predictions of high energy interaction models for different types of primary particles and also to determine the absolute flux of events in certain muon multiplicity range. The presentation describes the current status of the analysis.