Composition Classification of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

• Some of the quoted references need to be completed. For example: reference 3 and 4 do not comply with standard citation format. Reference 7 is not fully specified nor reference 11 and 12.
• Reference 9 and 10 are examples of machine learning applications in other fields and it would be good to mention this when quoted.
• Reference 14 should be replaced by a formal article on the LHC and its parameters.
• In line 76 of the manuscript says "the LHC-CERN collider has a maximum energy of 13 TeV per beam…"   which is wrong. The energy per beam is 6.5 TeV. It must be corrected.
• Reference 21 needs more information for the reader to access in case needed.
• Reference 22 does not appear in sequence in the body of the article.
• In line 84 says: “(muons are electron-like but 200 times larger and produced by the pion decay)” probably wants to express that: "the muon mass is about 200 times greater than the electron mass"

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The research on UHECR is a very interesting topic that will provide information about the universe, its evolution, etc. The authors presented a comparative analysis of several machine learning techniques in order to see how precise it possible to carry out the classification of the particle composition of a cosmic ray. This work is continuation, i.e. expansion of authors conference work Ref. [22] published as a book chapter.

The topic of considered paper is important and will be interesting for potential readers, but the text in the present form is not ready for publication.  It is necessary to make corrections and improvement of the paper i.e. moderate revision.

After the part of the text (which ends with line 66) in the Introduction, the authors should give the aim of this work, as e.g. ‘The aim of this work is to....’ or similar, i.e. what is the reason to write this paper? What is new here compared to recent Ref. [22]? Also, the authors should make more effort, especially in Sec. 4, to point out how their findings differ from or are similar to related investigations.

Question. Can be (in some way…any idea?) upgraded/modified KNN algorithm be more useful because it is faster than others?

Authors should correct some technical shortcomings and problems:

In affiliations there are two superscript 2. It should be “^{2} Theoretical and Cosmos Physics Department, University of Granada, Spain” => “^{3} Theoretical and Cosmos Physics Department, University of Granada, Spain”

Line 62: [9] [10]. => [9, 10].

Line 65: [11][12][13] =>  [11-13]

Line 76: Ref [14] should be inserted in the text as footnote or just (https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-lhc). Same goes for Refs [29] and [30].

Line 162: “…XGBoost (v.0.72)[30] …” => “… XGBoost (v.0.72) [30] …”

Line 173: “… asymptotic behavior[32].” => “… asymptotic behavior [32].”

Line 212: [12][13] => [12, 13]

-In References: All references should be written in the same way, according to the journal style. For Journal Name authors should use Abbreviated Journal Name e.g. in

Ref 1 Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics => J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys.

Also, there are lot of errors in References.

Ref [3]  “Aab, A.; others. …” = >  “Aab, A., Abreu, P., Aglietta, M. A. R. C. O., Ahn, E. J., Al Samarai, I., Albuquerque, I. F. D. M., ... & Castillo…”

Ref [4] “Aab, A.e.a….” => “ Aab, A., Abreu, P., Aglietta, M., Al Samarai, I., Albuquerque, I. F. M., Allekotte, I., ... & Anchordoqui, L….”

Ref [7] shold be “ D. Heck, J. Knapp, J. Capdevielle, G. Schatz, T. Thouw., A Monte-Carlo Code to Simulate Extensive Air Showers –Report FZKA 6019, Tech. rep., 1998 . Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, https://www.ikp.kit.edu/corsika/70.php .”

Ref [8] “D, K.; M, S. Toward ….” => “Koller, D., & Sahami, M. …”

Ref [21] has no year. Correct it (it shold be Nelson, W. R., Hirayama, H., & Rogers, D. W. (1985). EGS4 code system (No. SLAC-265). Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA (USA).)

Ref [22] : ”Alberto Guillén, Carlos Todero, J.C.M.L.J.H. A …” => “Guillén A., Todero C., Martínez J.C., Herrera L.J….:

…

etc., . In general, it could be useful to check all references.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors successfully corrected the text according to the requests and suggestions. Now the manuscript is ready for acceptance in present form.