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A new approach to simulate fluorescence photons produced in extensive air showers is described. A Monte Carlo program based on CORSIKA produces the fluorescence photons for each charged particle in the development of the shower. This method results in a full three-dimensional simulation of the particles in a shower and of the fluorescence light generated in the atmosphere. The photons produced by this program are tracked down to a telescope and the simulation of a particular detector is applied. The differences between this method and one-dimensional approaches are quantitatively determined as a function of the distance between the telescope and the shower core. As a particular application, the maximum distance at which the Auger fluorescence telescope might be able to measure the lateral distribution of a shower is determined as a function of energy., Comment: 20 pages and 11 figures. This enhanced version corresponds to the one aproved for publication in Astroparticle Physics

The contribution of different components of an air shower to the total energy deposit in the atmosphere, for different angles and primary particles, was studied using the CORSIKA air shower simulation code. The amount of missing energy, parameterized in terms of the calorimetric energy, was calculated. The results show that this parameterization varies less than 1% with angle or observation level. The dependence with the primary mass is less than 5% and, with the high energy hadronic interaction model, less than 2%. The systematic error introduced by the use of just one parameterization of the missing energy correction function, for an equal mixture of proton and iron at 45deg, was calculated to be below 3%. We estimate the statistical error due to shower-to-shower fluctuations to be about 1%., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables. This version corresponds to the one aproved for publication in Astroparticle Physics