ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INVESTIGATION OF THE MASS COMPOSITION AND ENERGY-SPECTRA OF PRIMARY COSMIC-RAY (PCR) IN THE ENERGY-RANGE FROM 10-15 TO 10-17 EV USING EAS DATA

A method allowing one to determine the mass composition of primary cosmic radiation by means of simultaneous analysis of model and experimental data is presented in this paper. The most important part of this work is the quantitative comparison of multivariate distributions and the use of methods of nonparametric statistics for probability density estimation in a multivariate space of features. To check the method offered, events with E0 > 500 TeV were generated by the Monte Carlo method. The showers generated were preliminarily processed by algorithms used in experimental data handling. The apparatus-induced distortions of the measured EAS characteristics have been taken into account. The method allows one to select an experimental event initiated by primary protons and iron nuclei with an efficiency of (70 divided-by 80)%. Also a new multivariate method of incident particle energy estimation based on the nonparametric regression is described. The method proposed, together with the above-mentioned multivariate EAS classification, allows one to determine the energy spectrum of incident protons and nuclei. Detection and investigation of the products of interaction of these particles with the atmosphere will allow us to study proton-nuclei and nuclei-nuclei interactions at energies from 10(15) to 10(17) eV.