Exploiting the geomagnetic distortion of inclined atmospheric showers

We propose a novel approach to the determination of the nature of ultra-high energy cosmic rays by exploiting the geomagnetic deviation of muons in nearly horizontal showers. The distribution of muons at ground level is well described by a simple parameterization providing a few shape parameters tightly correlated to Xmaxμ, the depth of maximal muon production, which is a mass indicator tightly correlated to the usual parameter Xmax, the depth of maximal development of the shower. We show that some constraints can be set on the predictions of hadronic models, especially by combining the geomagnetic distortion with standard measurements of the longitudinal profile. We discuss the precision needed to obtain significant results, and we propose a schematic layout of a detector.