QGSJET-II: towards reliable description of very high energy hadronic interactions

Since a number of years the QGSJET model has been successfully used by different groups in the field of high energy cosmic rays. Current work is devoted to the first general update of the model. The key improvement is connected to an account for non-linear interaction effects which are of crucial importance for reliable model extrapolation into the ultra-high energy domain. The proposed formalism allows to obtain a consistent description of hadron-hadron cross sections and hadron structure functions and to treat non-linear effects explicitly in individual hadronic and nuclear collisions. Other ameliorations concern the treatment of low mass diffraction, employment of realistic nuclear density profiles, and re-calibration of model parameters using a wider set of accelerator data.