New measurement of the electron flux from 10 GeV to 100 GeV with the bets instrument Original Research Article

The BETS (balloon-borne electron telescope with scintillating fibers) instrument has been developed for high-altitude balloon flights to observe the cosmic ray electrons with energies of 10 GeV to several 100 GeV. The detector is a Lead/SciFi sampling calorimeter consisting of 36 SciFi belts (each 280 mm wide) and 8 lead plates (each 5 mm thick). The electron identification is performed by triggering the electro-magnetic showers on board and by analyzing the three-dimensional shower images by an intensified CCD camera. It is demonstrated in the flight data in 1995 and 1997 that a reliable identification of the electron component against the proton background is achieved up to a few 100 GeV. The performance of detector was tested by the CERN-SPS electron beams in 1996 and with the proton beams in 1997. The obtained energy spectrum is consistent with the recent observation by HEAT, although our result still has a little room for improvement. The energy spectrum from 10 GeV to 1000 GeV which is obtained by combining these data and the emulsion chamber data (Nishimura 1997) suggests that the diffusion constant is about 1 × 1028 (E/GeV)0.3 cm2/sec in the energy range between 10 GeV and 1000 GeV. A hump in the energy spectrum is observed around several hundred GeV, which is expected from a nearby source.