The DAMPE experiment: 2 year in orbit

Abstract

Abstract. The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space mission within the strategic framework of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, resulting from a collaboration of Chinese, Italian, and Swiss institutions, and is a new addition to the growing number of particle detectors in space. It was successfully launched in December 2015 and has commenced nominal science operations since shortly after launch. Lending technologies from its predecessors such as AMS and Fermi-LAT, it features a powerful segmented electromagnetic calorimeter which thanks to its 31 radiation lengths enables the study of charged cosmic rays in the energy domain of up to 100 TeV and gamma rays of up to 10 TeV. The calorimeter is complemented with a silicon-tungsten tracker converter which yields a comparable angular resolution as current space-borne pair-conversion gamma-ray detectors. In addition, the detector features a top anticoincidence shield made of segmented silicon plastic scintillators and a boron-doped plastic scintillator on the bottom of the instrument to detect delayed neutrons arising from cosmic ray protons showering in the calorimeter. An overview of the mission and a summary of the latest results in the domain of charged cosmic rays, gamma rays and heavy ions will be presented.

AMS-100: The next generation magnetic spectrometer in space – An international science platform for physics and astrophysics at Lagrange point 2

“…1). Several of these questions have emerged in the last decade, as a result of the tremendous success of recent space missions, such as PAMELA [1], Fermi-LAT [2], AMS-02 [3], CALET [4], and DAMPE [5]. In particular, the magnetic spectrometer AMS-02 has revealed several unexpected new features in the cosmicray matter [6,7] and antimatter fluxes [8,9] that have challenged much of our traditional understanding of particle astrophysics, across a range of topics such as the nature of dark matter and the origin and propagation of cosmic rays.…”