ENERGY-DISSIPATION OF HADRONIC-INTERACTIONS WELL ABOVE COLLIDER ENERGIES VIEWED FROM FLYS EYE DATA ON DEPTHS OF SHOWER MAXIMA

Using the depths of shower maxima, as measured by Fly's Eye experiment , we study the energy dissipation of hadronic showers resulting from c osmic ray interactions at energies between 3 x 10(17) eV and 10(19) eV . We place, based on Fly's Eye data, a set of constraints on the expec ted depths of shower maxima for proton-initiated showers, disentanglin g the hadronic interaction features from the cosmic ray composition. I t is shown that in the energy region substantially above collider ener gies, only Monte Carlo simulations using hadronic interaction models c haracterized by a strong energy dissipation predict the depths of show er maxima that are consistent with this set of constraints. Between th e two equally good fits of the energy dependences of cross-section and multiplicity at collider energies - the power law and log-square law, we find that the cosmic ray data favor the power law above collider e nergies. The Feynman scaling in the fragmentation region above collide r energies is valid only if the cross-section for inelastic hadron-air -nucleus interactions increases much more rapidly than the trend estab lished at accelerator energies. The multiple nucleon interaction pictu re appears to be plausible for hadron-nucleus interactions.