Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 70: Instrumentation 20

HK 70.1: Group Report

Friday, March 27, 2015, 14:30–15:00, M/HS2

Detection of Low-Energy Antinuclei in Space Using an Active-Target Particle Detector — •Thomas Pöschl¹, Daniel Greenwald¹, Igor Konorov¹, Martin Losekamm^1,2, and Stephan Paul¹ — ¹Physics Department E18, Technische Universität München — ²Institute of Astronautics, Technische Universität München

Measuring antimatter in space excellently probes various astrophysical processes. The abundancies and energy spectra of antiparticles reveal a lot about the creation and propagation of cosmic-ray particles in the universe. Abnormalities in their spectra can reveal exotic sources or inaccuracies in our understanding of the involved processes. The measurement of antiprotons and the search for antideuterons and antihelium are optimal at low kinetic energies since background from high-energy cosmic-ray collisions is low. For this reason, we are developing an active-target particle detector capable of detecting ions and anti-ions in the energy range of 30 - 100 MeV per nucleon. The detector consists of 900 scintillating fibers coupled to silicon photomultipliers and is designed to operate on nanosatellites. The primary application of the detector will be the Antiproton Flux in Space (AFIS) mission, whose goal is the measurement of geomagnetically trapped antiprotons inside Earth’s inner radiation belt. In this talk, we will explain our particle identification technique and present results from first in-beam measurements with a prototype. This work is supported by the Excellence Cluster ‘Origin and Structure of the Universe’.