2011
DOI: 10.1126/science.1199172
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PAMELA Measurements of Cosmic-Ray Proton and Helium Spectra

Abstract: Protons and helium nuclei are the most abundant components of the cosmic radiation. Precise measurements of their fluxes are needed to understand the acceleration and subsequent propagation of cosmic rays in our Galaxy. We report precision measurements of the proton and helium spectra in the rigidity range 1 gigavolt to 1.2 teravolts performed by the satellite-borne experiment PAMELA (payload for antimatter matter exploration and light-nuclei astrophysics). We find that the spectral shapes of these two species… Show more

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Cited by 844 publications
(897 citation statements)
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References 33 publications
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“…4, we show the predicted HERD spectra for protons, helium nuclei, carbon nuclei and iron nuclei, in comparison with all previous direct measurements in space. Clearly HERD will surpass all previous results of directly measured cosmic rays from, e.g., AMS02 [13], ATIC-2 [14], BESS [15], CREAM, [16,17] HEAO [18], JACEE [19], PAMELA [20], RUNJOB [21], SOKOL [22] and TRACER [23], with much better statistics and up to much higher energies even beyond PeV and into the "knee" region. For example, at least ten events will be recorded from 900 TeV to 2 PeV for each specie, which means that the expected energy spectra of most nuclei will be directly extended to the knee range with much smaller error bars than previous direct measurements in space.…”
Section: Item Value Detectormentioning
confidence: 83%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…4, we show the predicted HERD spectra for protons, helium nuclei, carbon nuclei and iron nuclei, in comparison with all previous direct measurements in space. Clearly HERD will surpass all previous results of directly measured cosmic rays from, e.g., AMS02 [13], ATIC-2 [14], BESS [15], CREAM, [16,17] HEAO [18], JACEE [19], PAMELA [20], RUNJOB [21], SOKOL [22] and TRACER [23], with much better statistics and up to much higher energies even beyond PeV and into the "knee" region. For example, at least ten events will be recorded from 900 TeV to 2 PeV for each specie, which means that the expected energy spectra of most nuclei will be directly extended to the knee range with much smaller error bars than previous direct measurements in space.…”
Section: Item Value Detectormentioning
confidence: 83%
“…Ground-based extensive air shower experiments [6,7,8] continue to make progress [9]; however, these experiments have difficulties in making composition-resolved high-energy resolution measurements of the fine structure of the "knee". On the other hand, experiments based on balloons [14,16], satellites [20], or the international space station [13] can measure the particle energy and charge directly; however, these experiments suffer from small geometrical factor and limited energy range to make statistically meaningful measurements of the "knee".…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In turn, the diffusion coefficient affects the CR spectrum observed at Earth. This phenomenon, discussed by [6,7] might play an important role in understanding features on the CR spectrum recently reported by PAMELA [8] and CREAM [9]. This paper is organized as follows: in §2 I will discuss the implications of the NLDSA in terms of magnetic field amplification and how this might mitigate the spectral problem illustrated above.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 94%
“…The PAMELA [8] experiment has provided evidence that the spectra of CR protons and helium nuclei have a break at rigidity ∼ 200 GV. The spectrum of protons measured by PAMELA has a slope 2.85 ± 0.015(stat) ± 3 0.004(syst) at R < 240 GV and 2.67 ± 0.03 ± 0.05 at R > 240 GV.…”
Section: Propagation Of Crs In the Galaxymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This form of source spectrum is chosen so as to reproduce the recently measured proton spectrum by various experiments such as the ATIC [22], CREAM [23], and PAMELA, [24] which exhibit a spectral hardening above ∼ 250 GeV. The observed hardening might be due to the effect of local sources, propagation effects or signature of the cosmicray source spectrum itself (see e.g., Refs.…”
Section: Cosmic-ray Injectionmentioning
confidence: 99%