Author/Authors :
M. Casolino، نويسنده , , P. Picozza، نويسنده , , F. Altamura، نويسنده , , A. Basili، نويسنده , , N. De Simone، نويسنده , , V. Di Felice، نويسنده , , M.P. De Pascale، نويسنده , , L. Marcelli، نويسنده , , M. Minori، نويسنده , , M. Nagni، نويسنده , , R. Sparvoli، نويسنده , , A.M. Galper، نويسنده , , V.V. Mikhailov، نويسنده , , M.F. Runtso، نويسنده , , S.A. Voronov، نويسنده , , Y.T. Yurkin، نويسنده , , V.G. Zverev، نويسنده , , G. Castellini، نويسنده , , O. Adriani، نويسنده , , L. Bo-ot، نويسنده ,
Abstract :
PAMELA is a satellite borne experiment designed to study with great accuracy cosmic rays of galactic, solar, and trapped nature in a wide energy range (protons 80 MeV–700 GeV, electrons 50 MeV–400 GeV). Main objective is the study of the antimatter component: antiprotons (80 MeV–190 GeV), positrons (50 MeV–270 GeV) and search for antimatter with a precision of the order of 10−8. The experiment, housed on board the Russian Resurs-DK1 satellite, was launched on June 15th, 2006 in a 350 × 600 km orbit with an inclination of 70°. The detector is composed of a series of scintillator counters arranged at the extremities of a permanent magnet spectrometer to provide charge, time-of-flight, and rigidity information. Lepton/hadron identification is performed by a silicon–tungsten calorimeter and a neutron detector placed at the bottom of the device. An anticounter system is used offline to reject false triggers coming from the satellite. In self-trigger mode the calorimeter, the neutron detector, and a shower tail catcher are capable of an independent measure of the lepton component up to 2 TeV. In this work we describe the experiment, its scientific objectives, and the performance in the first months after launch.
