The CALorimetric Electron Telescope, CALET, has been measuring high-energy cosmic rays on the International Space Station since October 13, 2015. The scientific objectives addressed by the mission ...are to search for possible nearby sources of high-energy electrons and potential signatures of dark matter, and to investigate the details of galactic cosmic-ray acceleration and propagation. The calorimetric instrument, which is 30 radiation lengths or 1.3 proton interaction lengths thick with fine imaging capability, is optimized to measure cosmic-ray electrons by achieving large proton rejection and excellent energy resolution well into the TeV region. In addition, very wide dynamic range of energy measurement and individual charge identification capability enable us to measure proton and nuclei spectra from a few tens GeV to a PeV scale. Nearly 20 million cosmic-ray shower events over 10 GeV per month are triggered and the continuous observation has been kept without any major interruption since the start of operation. Using the data obtained over 6.5 years of operation, we will present a brief summary of the CALET observation including electron spectrum, and proton and nuclei spectra as well as the performance study on orbit with MC simulations.
Issue Title: The Composition of Matter We have measured the isotopic abundances of neon and a number of other species in the galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) using the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer ...(CRIS) aboard the ACE spacecraft. Our data are compared to recent results from two-component (Wolf-Rayet material plus solar-like mixtures) Wolf-Rayet (WR) models. The three largest deviations of galactic cosmic ray isotope ratios from solar-system ratios predicted by these models, ^sup 12^C/^sup 16^O, ^sup 22^Ne/^sup 20^Ne, and ^sup 58^Fe/^sup 56^Fe, are very close to those observed. All of the isotopic ratios that we have measured are consistent with a GCR source consisting of 20% of WR material mixed with 80% material with solar-system composition. Since WR stars are evolutionary products of OB stars, and most OB stars exist in OB associations that form superbubbles, the good agreement of our data with WR models suggests that OB associations within superbubbles are the likely source of at least a substantial fraction of GCRs. In previous work it has been shown that the primary ^sup 59^Ni (which decays only by electron-capture) in GCRs has decayed, indicating a time interval between nucleosynthesis and acceleration of >10^sup 5^ y. It has been suggested that in the OB association environment, ejecta from supernovae might be accelerated by the high velocity WR winds on a time scale that is short compared to the half-life of ^sup 59^Ni. Thus the ^sup 59^Ni might not have time to decay and this would cast doubt upon the OB association origin of cosmic rays. In this paper we suggest a scenario that should allow much of the ^sup 59^Ni to decay in the OB association environment and conclude that the hypothesis of the OB association origin of cosmic rays appears to be viable. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Iron-60 (⁶⁰Fe) is a radioactive isotope in cosmic rays that serves as a clock to infer an upper limit on the time between nucleosynthesis and acceleration. We have used the ACE-CRIS instrument to ...collect 3.55 × 10⁵ iron nuclei, with energies ~195 to ~500 mega–electron volts per nucleon, of which we identify 15 ⁶⁰Fe nuclei. The ⁶⁰Fe/⁵⁶Fe source ratio is (7.5 ± 2.9) × 10⁻⁵. The detection of supernova-produced ⁶⁰Fe in cosmic rays implies that the time required for acceleration and transport to Earth does not greatly exceed the ⁶⁰Fe half-life of 2.6 million years and that the ⁶⁰Fe source distance does not greatly exceed the distance cosmic rays can diffuse over this time, ⪍1 kiloparsec. A natural place for ⁶⁰Fe origin is in nearby clusters of massive stars.
The Calorimetric Electron Telescope, CALET, is an astroparticle physics mission installed on the International Space Station, ISS. The primary objective of the mission is studying the details of ...galactic cosmic-ray acceleration and propagation, and searching for the possible nearby sources of high-energy electrons and dark matter signatures. The CALET experiment measure the flux of cosmic-ray electrons (including positrons) to 20 TeV, gamma-rays to 10 TeV and nuclei to 1000 TeV. The detector is an all-calorimetric instrument with a total vertical thickness of 30 radiation lengths and fine imaging capability, optimized for the measurement of the electron and positron (all-electron) spectrum well into the TeV energy region. It consists of a charge detector (CHD) with two layers of segmented plastic scintillators for the identification of cosmic-rays via a measurement of their charge over the range Z=1∼40, a 3 radiation length thick tungsten-scintillating fiber imaging calorimeter (IMC) and a 27 radiation length thick lead-tungstate calorimeter (TASC). The instrument was launched on August 19, 2015 to the ISS and installed on the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility. Since the start of operation in October, 2015, CALET has been collecting scientific data without any major interruption for more than eight years. The number of triggered events over 10 GeV is nearly 1.97 billion events as of November 30, 2023. In this paper, we present the results of the CALET mission so far, including the all-electron energy spectrum, the spectra of protons and other nuclei, gamma-ray observations, as well as the characterization of on-orbit performance. Some results on the electromagnetic counterpart search for LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave events and the observations of solar modulation and gamma-ray bursts are also included.
Iron and nickel cosmic ray nuclei play a key role in the understanding of the acceleration and propagation mechanisms of charged particles in our Galaxy. In fact, iron and nickel are the most ...abundant nuclei among the heavy elements and provide favorable conditions for a low background measurement thanks to the negligible contamination from spallation of higher mass elements. CALET, operating on the ISS since 2015, has excellent capabilities of charge discrimination up to nickel and can measure the energy of cosmic ray nuclei thanks to a lead tungstate calorimeter providing a direct and precise measurement of heavy charged nuclei spectra. In this contribution, a direct measurement of iron and nickel nuclei spectra in the energy range from 10 GeV/n to 2 TeV/n and from 8.8 GeV/n to 240 GeV/n, respectively is presented. More than five years of data collected by CALET were used. A detailed study of systematic uncertainties is also illustrated. The measured spectra are compared with the ones measured by other experiments and are compatible with a single power law fit in the energy region from 50 GeV/n to 2 TeV/n and from 20 GeV/n to 240 GeV/n for iron and nickel respectively. Also, the ratio between nickel and iron spectra is reported.
The NASA supported High-Altitude Calibration (HiCal)-2 instrument flew as a companion balloon to the ANITA-4 experiment in December 2016. Based on a high-voltage (HV) discharge pulser producing ...radio-frequency (RF) calibration pulses, HiCal-2 comprised two payloads, which flew for a combined 18 days, covering 1.5 revolutions of the Antarctic continent. ANITA-4 captured over 10,000 pulses from HiCal-2, both direct and reflected from the surface, at distances varying from 100–700 km, providing a large dataset for surface reflectivity measurements. Herein we present details on the design, construction and performance of HiCal-2.
Design and tests of the hard X-ray polarimeter X-Calibur Beilicke, M.; Baring, M.G.; Barthelmy, S. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
11/2012, Letnik:
692
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
X-ray polarimetry will give qualitatively new information about high-energy astrophysical sources. We designed, built and tested a hard X-ray polarimeter X-Calibur to be used in the focal plane of ...the InFOCμS grazing incidence hard X-ray telescope. X-Calibur combines a low-Z Compton scatterer with a CZT detector assembly to measure the polarization of 10–80keV X-rays making use of the fact that polarized photons Compton scatter preferentially perpendicular to the electric field orientation. X-Calibur achieves a high detection efficiency of order unity.
We describe herein a measurement of the Antarctic surface “roughness” performed by the balloon‐borne ANITA (Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) experiment. Originally purposed for cosmic ray ...astrophysics, the radio frequency (RF) receiver ANITA gondola, from its 38 km altitude vantage point, can scan a disk of snow surface 600 km in radius. The primary purpose of ANITA is to detect RF emissions from cosmic rays incident on Antarctica, such as neutrinos which penetrate through the atmosphere and interact within the ice, resulting in signal directed upward which then refracts at the ice‐air interface and up and out to ANITA, or high‐energy nuclei (most likely irons or protons), which interact in the upper atmosphere (at altitudes below ANITA) and produce a spray of down‐coming RF which reflects off the snow surface and back up to the gondola. The energy of such high‐energy nuclei can be inferred from the observed reflected signal only if the surface reflectivity is known. We describe herein an attempt to quantify the Antarctic surface reflectivity, using the Sun as a constant, unpolarized RF source. We find that the reflectivity of the surface generally follows the expectations from the Fresnel equations, lending support to the use of those equations to give an overall correction factor to calculate cosmic ray energies for all locations in Antarctica. The analysis described below is based on ANITA‐II data. After launching from McMurdo Station in December 2008, ANITA‐II was aloft for a period of 31 days with a typical instantaneous duty cycle exceeding 95%.
Key Points
Solar radio radiation is used to determine Antarctic albedo
Reflection coefficients agree with Fresnel predictions at high incidence angles
Reflection coefficients are lower than expected at glancing incidence angles
The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) is a NASA long-duration balloon experiment with the primary goal of detecting ultra-high-energy (>1018eV) neutrinos via the Askaryan Effect. The ...fourth ANITA mission, ANITA-IV, recently flew from Dec 2 to Dec 29, 2016. For the first time, the Tunable Universal Filter Frontend (TUFF) boards were deployed for mitigation of narrow-band, anthropogenic noise with tunable, switchable notch filters. The TUFF boards also performed second-stage amplification by approximately 45 dB to boost the ∼μV-level radio frequency (RF) signals to ∼ mV-level for digitization, and supplied power via bias tees to the first-stage, antenna-mounted amplifiers. The other major change in signal processing in ANITA-IV is the resurrection of the 90° hybrids deployed previously in ANITA-I, in the trigger system, although in this paper we focus on the TUFF boards. During the ANITA-IV mission, the TUFF boards were successfully operated throughout the flight. They contributed to a factor of 2.8 higher total instrument livetime on average in ANITA-IV compared to ANITA-III due to reduction of narrow-band, anthropogenic noise before a trigger decision is made.
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