The implication of charged particle lateral distribution function for extensive air shower studies

The knowledge of charged particle lateral distribution function (LDF) is of prime importance in extensive air shower (EAS) investigations. This function is necessary for the determination of the total number of particles as well as some other classification parameters.The Nishimura-Kamata-Greisen (NKG) function is being actively employed by many researchers in spite of the fact that it was derived under rather crude assumptions (in so-called B Approximation of the electromagnetic cascade theory).Our paper discusses the dependence of the EAS size spectrum on the LDF form adopted and compares two LDFs: the traditional NKG-function and the scaling function suggested recently. Prominence is given to the EAS MSU data but the results of other EAS arrays (AGASA, Yakutsk and KASCADE) are also considered.