The Physics of the Knee in the Cosmic Ray Spectrum

Recent results from the KASCADE extensive air shower experiment are presented. After briefly reviewing the status of the experiment we report on tests of hadronic interaction models and emphasize the progress being made in understanding the properties and origin of the knee at $E_{knee} ~ 4.10^{15} eV. Analysing the muon- and hadron trigger rates in the KASCADE calorimeter as well as the global properties of high energy hadrons in the shower core leads us to conclude that QGSJET still provides the best overall description of EAS data, being superior to DPMJET II-5 and neXus 2, for example. Performing high statistics CORSIKA simulations and applying sophisticated unfolding techniques to the electron and muon shower size distributions, we are able to successfully deconvolute the all-particle energy spectrum into energy spectra of 4 individual primary mass groups (p, He, C, Fe). Each of these preliminary energy distributions exhibits a knee like structure with a change of their knee positions suggesting a constant rigidity of R ~ 2-3 PV