Towards the Energy Spectrum and Composition of Primary Cosmic Rays in the Knee Region: Methods and Results at KASCADE

KASCADE (KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector) is a multi-detector setup to observe the electromagnetic, muonic and hadronic air shower components simultaneously at primary energies in the region of the “knee”. A large number of observables per single shower are registered. The main aims of the experiment are the determination of the primary energy spectrum around the “knee” and the energy variation of the chemical composition. The measurements reveal an increasing mean mass of the primary cosmic rays above the observed kink, and a sharper knee for the light primary component than for the all-particle spectrum, and the absence of a knee for the heavy component between 1 and 10 PeV.