abstract
- © 2022 American Physical Society.A measurement with high statistics of the differential energy spectrum of light elements in cosmic rays, in particular, of primary H plus He nuclei, is reported. The spectrum is presented in the energy range from 6 to 158 TeV per nucleus. Data was collected with the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory between June 2015 and June 2019. The analysis was based on a Bayesian unfolding procedure, which was applied on a subsample of vertical HAWC data that was enriched to 82% of events induced by light nuclei. To achieve the mass separation, a cut on the lateral age of air shower data was set guided by predictions of CORSIKA/QGSJET-II-04 simulations. The measured spectrum is consistent with a broken power-law spectrum and shows a kneelike feature at around E=24.0-3.1+3.6 TeV, with a spectral index ¿=-2.51±0.02 before the break and with ¿=-2.83±0.02 above it. The feature has a statistical significance of 4.1¿. Within systematic uncertainties, the significance of the spectral break is 0.8¿.