  Although the electromagnetic and muonic components of extensive air showers
have been studied in great detail, no comprehensive simulation study of the
neutron component is available. This is related to the complexity of neutron
transport processes that is typically not treated in standard simulation tools.
In this work we use the Monte Carlo simulation package Fluka to study the
production and the transport of neutrons in extensive air showers over the full
range of neutron energies, extending down to thermal neutrons. The importance
of different neutron production mechanisms and their impact on predicted
neutron distributions in energy, lateral distance, atmospheric depth, and
arrival time are discussed. In addition, the dependencies of the predictions on
the properties of the primary particle are studied. The results are compared to
the equivalent distributions of muons, which serve as reference.
