A wide field-of-view Cherenkov telescope has been working in the surroundings of the Yakutsk array experiment since 2012. Its main function is to measure the waveform of the optical Cherenkov radiation signal induced by extensive air showers of cosmic rays. Analysis of the dataset collected by the telescope in the vicinity of ${10}^{17}\mathrm{eV}$ is intended for the reconstruction of the parameters of the development of the showers in addition to the main shower characteristics measured by the rest of the array detectors. In this paper, the observed duration of the Cherenkov radiation signal as a function of the shower core distance is used to estimate the depth of the shower maximum in a different way based on the results of model simulations. The results are in general agreement with those of other works.

• Received 29 September 2021
• Accepted 10 February 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.042008