Calibration and monitoring of LHAASO-KM2A muon detectors with muon decay events

Abstract The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) will be constructed at 4400 m asl in Daocheng, Sichuan Province, with the aim of discovering sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and studying cosmic ray physics. The whole array includes 1171 muon detectors (MDs), constituting the largest muon detector array in the world. The special high altitude and wide-field environment requires simple and stable calibration as well as monitoring method of MDs. In this paper, the muon decay events will be selected for calibrating the charge and monitoring the water level of each MD. In the prototype muon detector, the simulation and experiment results reveal that the charge of the decay electron is approximately 0.147 times that of the vertical equivalent muon for a standard MD, and the Q V E M ∕ Q e shows a linear correlation with the water level.