A direct measurement of the muon component of air showers by the KASCADE-Grande Experiment

The muon component of atmospheric air showers is a very relevant information in astroparti- cle physics due to its direct relation to the primary particle type and dependence on the hadronic inter- actions. In this paper, we study the muon densities measured by the KASCADE-Grande experiment and illustrate its importance in composition studies and testing of hadronic interaction models. The data analysed here was measured by the KASCADE- Grande detector and lies in the 1016 1018 eV energy range. The measured muon density is compared to predictions of EPOS 1.61 and QGSJet II hadronic interaction models.