The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is a space experiment, currently under development by Japan in collaboration with Italy and the United States, which will measure the flux of cosmic-ray electrons (and positrons) up to 20 TeV energy, of gamma rays up to 10 TeV, of nuclei with Z from 1 to 40 up to 1 PeV energy, and will detect gamma-ray bursts in the 7 keV to 20 MeV energy range during a 5 year mission. These measurements are essential to investigate possible nearby astrophysical sources of high energy electrons, study the details of galactic particle propagation and search for dark matter signatures. The main detector of CALET, the Calorimeter, consists of a module to identify the particle charge, followed by a thin imaging calorimeter (3 radiation lengths) with tungsten plates interleaving scintillating fibre planes, and a thick energy measuring calorimeter (27 radiation lengths) composed of lead tungstate logs. The Calorimeter has the depth, imaging capabilities and energy resolution necessary for excellent separation between hadrons, electrons and gamma rays. The instrument is currently being prepared for launch (expected in 2015) to the International Space Station ISS, for installation on the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposure Facility (JEM-EF).
The ISS-based Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is directly measuring the energy spectrum of electron+positron cosmic rays up to 20 TeV. Cosmic-ray electrons of TeV region energy are limited by energy loss to a propagation range of about 1 kpc, therefore the expected sources are a few nearby supernova remnants (SNR), with the Vela SNR dominating the spectrum [1]. The latest spectrum measured by CALET [2] in combination with the positron-only flux published by AMS-02 [3] is fitted with a comprehensive model including nearby pulsars as the source of the positron excess. This model is extended to the TeV region by addition of the flux from the Vela SNR as calculated with DRAGON, with the integrated energy emitted in electron cosmic rays by the SNR as a variable scale factor. Exploring various scenarios for the time and energy dependence of the cosmic-ray release from Vela, under varied propagation conditions, best-fitting interpretations of the spectrum and upper limits on the emission of cosmic-ray electrons by Vela have been derived.
The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a NASA mission concept under development by an international team for a possible new mission start in the year 2001. The instrument operates as an e'e-pair conversion telescope and supporting calorimeter imaging gamma rays in the 10 MeV to 300 GeV energy range. The baseline design consists of a modular array of e'e-pair trackers formed from multiple planes of Silicon strip detectors interleaved with converter foils of Pb. A matching array of calorimeters of CsI(TI) are below the trackers. We present here the requirements and simulations of the performance of this imaging calorimeter.
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