A More Complete Phenomenology of Tau Lepton Induced Air Showers

Many proposed and upcoming experiments seek to observe signals from upwardgoing air showers initiated by tau leptons resulting from neutrino interactionsinside the Earth. To save calculation time, event estimations for theseobservation methods are usually performed while making several assumptionsabout the showers themselves, which simplifies their rich phenomenology and mayor may not lead to inaccuracies in results. Here, we present results ofextensive CORSIKA simulations of upward going tau initiated showers in theenergy range 1 PeV to 10 EeV. Specifically, we monitor the Cherenkov emission,the charged particle distributions, and the timing of the showers for differentgeometric configurations. We analyze the impact of the decay length anddifferent decay modes of the tau on particle distributions and compare toprimaries usually utilized to simulate a tau shower, such as gammas, electrons,and protons. We also check the accuracy of many of the usual assumptions ofthese showers and analyze the often ignored muon channel of the tau decay.