Cosmic rays ab ov e the knee: ex perimental results and their interp retation

摘要

In spite of more than 50 year investigations, the problems of the knee origin and cosmic ray energy spec-trumand mass composition above it did not find a contented solution. In this paper, two possible interpretations of re-sultsof EAS investigations - cosmophysical and nuclear-physical ones - are compared. In frame of the first one,there are serious difficulties with explanation of mass composition changes above the knee. Opposite, recent applica-tionof nuclear-physical approach for this purpose gave very impressive results. This approach allows to solve allproblems connected with cosmic ray energy spectrum and mass composition investigations and explain the detectionof various unusual events in different experiments above the knee, too.