The publication is related to the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1491 "Cosmic Interacting Matters", which is based at RUB and combines theoretical astrophysical models with experimental observations. TU Dortmund University and the University of Wuppertal are also involved in the SFB. The research links two central questions of modern physics: How well do the laws of particle physics, which we know from the laboratory, describe the processes in the universe? And do the differences between measurements of cosmic particle collisions and the predictions from laboratory experiments provide clues to new physical phenomena?

In the current review, the authors shed light on how so-called event generators - programmes for simulating hadron collisions - can be used both in accelerator experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and in astroparticle experiments. While these generators are successfully used to describe collisions in the laboratory, they often reach their limits when interpreting data from experiments with high-energy cosmic rays. The review shows that the complementarity between accelerator and astroparticle experiments can be utilised by uniformly tuning these models to data from both research fields. This can provide new insights into the nature of hadron collisions and increase modelling accuracy for both laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations.

The ground-breaking results were developed during a four-day international workshop organised about a year ago under the direction of Prof. Dr Karl-Heinz Kampert, Dr Julian Rautenberg and Chloé Gaudu at the University of Wuppertal as part of the research work on the CRC1491 in collaboration with colleagues from TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum. The international experts from the various research areas took part in this meeting to discuss the complementarity of the data and theoretical models for the first time. The data from the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina and the IceCube Observatory at the South Pole, in which BUW researchers are involved, provide important information in this regard.

The entire publication is available at https://rdcu.be/eUQNR