The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), whose final version AMS-02 is to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) for at least 3 years, is a detector designed to measure charged cosmic ray spectra with energies up to the TeV region and with high energy photon detection capability up to a few hundred GeV, using state-of-the art particle identification techniques. Among several detector subsystems, AMS includes a proximity focusing RICH enabling precise measurements of particle electric charge and velocity. The combination of both these measurements together with the particle rigidity measured on the silicon tracker endows a reliable measurement of the particle mass. The main topics of the AMS-02 physics program include detailed measurements of the nuclear component of the cosmic-ray spectrum and the search for indirect signatures of dark matter. Mass separation of singly charged particles, and in particular the separation of deuterons and antideuterons from massive backgrounds of protons and antiprotons respectively, is essential in this context. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations of AMS-02 have been used to evaluate the detector's performance for mass separation at different energies. The obtained results and physics prospects are presented.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2008, is a cosmic ray detector with several subsystems, one of which is a proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector. This detector will be equipped with a dual radiator (aerogel+NaF), a lateral conical mirror and a detection plane made of 680 photomultipliers and light guides, enabling precise measurements of particle electric charge and velocity. Combining velocity measurements with data on particle rigidity from the AMS Tracker it is possible to obtain a measurement for particle…
The AMS-02 detector will measure cosmic rays on the International Space Station. This contribution will cover production, testing, space qualification and integration of the AMS-02 anticoincidence counter. The anticoincidence counter is needed to to assure a clean track reconstruction for the charge determination and to reduce the trigger rate during periods of high flux.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) will be equipped with a proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cerenkov detector (RICH). Reconstruction of the Cerenkov angle and the electric charge with RICH are discussed. A likelihood method for the Cerenkov angle reconstruction was applied leading to a velocity determination for protons with a resolution around 0.1%. The electric charge reconstruction is based on the counting of the number of photoelectrons and on an overall efficiency estimation on an event-by-event basis. The isotopic mass separation…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to be installed on the International Space Station, will provide data on cosmic radiations in a large energy range. The main physics goals in the astroparticle domain are the antimatter and the dark matter searches. Dark matter should be composed of non baryonic weakly interacting massive particles, a good candidate being the lightest SUSY particle in R-parity conserving models. As a prototype for the AMS-02 experiment, the AMS-01 particle spectrometer was flown on the Space Shuttle Discovery in near earth orbit for a ten day mission in June 1998. The dir…
Antimatter search results of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) detector are presented. About 100 million triggers were collected in the 1998 precursor flight onboard space shuttle Discovery. This ten day mission exposed the detector on a 51.7 degrees orbit at an altitude around 350 km. Identification of charged cosmic rays is achieved by multiple energy loss and time-of-flight measurements. Bending inside the 0.15 T magnetic volume yields a measurement of the absolute value of the particle's rigidity. The supplemental knowledge of the sense of traversal identifies the sign of the charge. I…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), whose final version AMS-02 is to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) for at least 3 years, is a detector designed to measure charged cosmic ray spectra with energies up to the TeV region and with high energy photon detection capability up to a few hundred GeV, using state-of-the art particle identification techniques. It is equipped with several subsystems, one of which is a proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector equipped with a dual radiator (aerogel+NaF), a lateral conical mirror and a detection plane made of 680 pho…
The AMS is a state of the art detector for extraterrestrial study of antimatter, matter and missing matter. After a precursor flight on STS91 in May 1998, AMS will be installed on the International Space Station where it will operate for three years. In this paper the AMS experiment is described and is physics potential reviewed.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to be installed on the International Space Station, will provide data on cosmic radiations in the energy range from 0.5 GeV to 3 TeV. The main physics goals are the anti-matter and the dark matter searches. Observations and cosmology indicate that the Universe may include a large amount of unknown Dark Matter. It should be composed of non baryonic Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP). In R-parity conserving models a good WIMP candidate is the lightest SUSY particle. AMS offers a unique opportunity to study simultaneously SUSY dark matter in three d…
The AMS spectrometer will be installed on the International Space Station at the end of 2003. Among other improvements over the first version of the instrument, a ring imaging Cherenkov detector (RICH) will be added which latter should open a new window for cosmic-ray physics, allowing isotope separation up to A~25 between 1 and 10 GeV/c and elements identification up to Z~25 between threshold and 1 TeV/c/nucleon. It should also contribute to the high level of redundancy required for AMS and reject efficiency albedo particles. The results of the first generation prototype and the expected resu…
The expected physics and astrophysics capabilities of the AMS experiment on board the International Space Station are briefly reviewed : high statistics study of cosmic rays in a wide range of energies, search for primordial antimatter, search for non-baryonic dark matter and, to some extent, gamma-ray astronomy.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a detector designed to search for antimatter in the cosmic rays. The physics results from the test flight in June 1998 are analyzed and published. This paper reviews the results in the five published papers of the AMS collaboration, updates the current understanding of two puzzles, albedo $e^+/e^-$ and albedo $^3$He, and disscusses the influence of albedo particles.
AMS-02 is a multi-purpose spectrometer with superconducting magnet, and is designed for 3 years of data taking aboard the International Space Station. Its high performance regarding particle identification and energy measurement will allow performing indirect searches for dark matter (DM) in different channels simultaneously: gamma rays, positrons and antiprotons. AMS-02 sensitivity to those signals are presented and --provided the positron excess is due to DM signal-- it is shown that it allows to probe new physics models in detail. Its high sensitivity could even be a unique opportunity to r…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a particle physics detector designed to measure charged cosmic ray spectra with energies up to the TeV region and with high energy photon detection capability up to few hundred GeV. It will be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2008 and will operate for more than three years. Due to its large acceptance, the flight duration and the state-of-art of particle identification techniques, AMS will have a remarkable sensitivity on antimatter and dark matter searches. The addition of different detector systems provide AMS with complementary a…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a particle detector designed to detect antimatter. During the 10-day test flight on the space shuttle in June 1998, AMS detected $10^8$ events. Upon analysis, no antimatter was found and the antimatter limit was reduced to $1.1\times10^{-6}$. The proton spectrum shows some differences with the cosmic ray flux used in atmospheric neutrino simulation. A large amount of protons, positrons, and electrons were found below the geomagnetic rigidity cutoff. The energy of these particles are as high as several GeV, one order of magnitude higher than any previous…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a particle detector, designed to search for cosmic antimatter and dark matter and to study the elemental and isotopic composition of primary cosmic rays, that will be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2008 to operate for at least three years. The detector will be equipped with a ring imaging Cherenkov detector (RICH) enabling measurements of particle electric charge and velocity with unprecedented accuracy. Physics prospects and test beam results are shortly presented.
The AMS spectrometer will be installed on the International Space Station in 2005. Among other improvements over the first version of the instrument, a ring imaging Cherenkov detector (RICH) will be added and should open a new window for cosmic-ray physics, allowing isotope separation up to A = 25 between 1 and 10 GeV/c and element identification up to Z = 25 between threshold and 1 TeV/c/nucleon. It should also contribute to the high level of redundancy required for AMS and reject efficiency albedo particles. A second generation prototype has been operated for a few months : the architecture …
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) will be equipped with a proximity Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector for measuring the velocity and electric charge of the charged cosmic particles. This detector will contribute to the high level of redundancy required for AMS as well as to the rejection of albedo particles. Charge separation up to iron and a velocity resolution of the order of 0.1% for singly charged particles are expected. A RICH protoptype consisting of a detection matrix with 96 photomultiplier units, a segment of a conical …
The AMS detector, to be installed on the International Space Station, includes a Ring Imaging Cerenkov detector with two different radiators, silica aerogel (n=1.05) and sodium fluoride (n=1.334). This detector is designed to provide very precise measurements of velocity and electric charge in a wide range of cosmic nuclei energies and atomic numbers. The detector geometry, in particular the presence of a reflector for acceptance purposes, leads to complex Cerenkov patterns detected in a pixelized photomultiplier matrix. The results of different reconstruction methods applied to test beam data…
We propose low-energy antideuterons in cosmic rays as a new possible signature for indirect detection of supersymmetric dark matter. Since the energy spectrum of the antiproton secondary component is still spoilt by considerable theoretical uncertainties, looking for low-energy antideuterons seems a plausible alternative. We apply our calculation to the AMS experiment, when mounted on the International Spatial Station. If a few low-energy antideuterons will be discovered by AMS, this should be seriously taken as a clue for the existence of relic, massive neutralinos in the dark halo of our Gal…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) will be equipped with a proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector for measuring the electric charge and velocity of the charged cosmic particles. A RICH prototype consisting of 96 photomultiplier units, including a piece of the conical reflector, was built and its performance evaluated with ion beam data. Preliminary results of the in-beam tests performed with ion fragments resulting from collisions of a 158 GeV/c/nuc primary beam of Indium ions (CERN SPS) on a Pb target ar…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a particle physics detector designed to operate on the International Space Station (ISS). The aim of AMS is the direct detection of charged particles in the rigidity range from 0.5 GV to few TV to perform high statistics studies of cosmic rays in space and search for antimatter and dark matter. This will be possible because of the large geometrical acceptance, a very accurate energy determination and a very precise particle identification through redundant measurements of its energy, velocity and electric charge. AMS is scheduled to be placed on the ISS…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a state of the art detector for the extraterrestrial study of matter, antimatter and missing matter. During the ten days long STS-91 precursor flight in may 1998 AMS collected nearly 100 millions of Cosmic Rays on Low Earth Orbit, measuring with high accuracy their composition. We present results on the flux of proton, electron, positron and helium particles in the rigidity region 0.1 to 200 GV . Analysis of the under cutoff spectra indicates the existence of a new type of belts containing high energy particles and characterized by a dominance of positr…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a state of the art particle physics experiment for the extraterrestrial study of antimatter, matter and missing matter. AMS successfully completed the precursor STS91 Discovery flight (June 2nd-12th, 1998), completing 152 orbits at 52 degrees of latitude and about 400 km of height, collecting more than 100 million CR events. In this paper we report on the first flight experience and we present preliminary results on the search for nuclear antimatter. No antimatter nuclei with Z>=2 were detected. We obtain a model dependent upper limit on the anti-He /He…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) was flown on the space shuttle Discovery during flight STS-91 in a 51.7 degree orbit at altitudes between 320 and 390 km. A total of 2.86 * 10^6 helium nuclei were observed in the rigidity range 1 to 140 GV. No antihelium nuclei were detected at any rigidity. An upper limit on the flux ratio of antihelium to helium of < 1.1 * 10^-6 is obtained.
