Features of the absorption of 2-to 40-TeV cosmic-ray hadrons in lead

For the first time, experimental data on 2-to 40-TeV hadronic cascades recorded by a lead ionization calorimeter at the Tien-Shan mountain station of the Lebedev Institute of Physics (Moscow) are compared with the results of a present-day simulation based on the GEANT 3.21 code and performed with allowance for the detection procedure. The conclusion that along-flying component appears in high-energy hadronic cascades was drawn previously on the basis of these data. Some special features of the procedure for recording TeV-range hadrons in the calorimeter are considered. It is shown that the averaged hadronic cascades and various features of single cascades having energies below 10 TeV are simulated adequately by using the QGSJET + FLUKA generators of nuclear interactions, but that they are not described by using the GHEISHA generator at lower energies. Some features of the experimentally observed cascades could not be described for cascade energies above 10 TeV.