Air Shower Core Observation at High Altitudes

The limitation of the original mountain emulsion chamber experiments is discussed and a way to improve the air shower (AS) core detection at high altitudes by using a hadron calorimeter plus an AS array is presented. In this report the experimental approach is considered to be used to the checking of hadronic interaction models of the forward particle production at 10TeV energy region. Assuming that a KASCADE-like hadron calorimeter is set up at the center of the ARGO array at Yangbajing, a Monte Carlo shows that a low-height interaction and near core AS event sample at 10TeV region can be selected. This sample could provide an almost direct checking on the property of hadron production in the forward region of p-air inelastic interactions.