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Abstract:
Extensive air showers (EAS) are the only way to study cosmic rays above a few
hundred TeV primary energy. The properties of EAS are briefly reviewed, with
emphasis on observables which depend on primary mass such as the
muon-to-electron ratio and longitudinal development. Then the problems
encountered by EAS measurements are discussed:
- insufficient knowledge of strong interactions at high energies;
- large fluctuations, especially of proton induced showers;
- the limited sensitivity of EAS observables to primary mass.
It is then outlined how the design of the KASCADE experiment tries to
overcome these problems.
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