Abstract

Air shower simulations are a vital part of the design of air shower experiments and the analysis of their data. We describe the basic features of air showers and explain why numerical simulations are the appropriate approach to model the shower simulation. The CORSIKA program, the standard simulation program in this field, is introduced and its features, performance and limitations are discussed. The basic principles of hadronic interaction models and some gemeral simulation techniques are explained. Also a brief introduction to the installation and use of CORSIKA is given. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.