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 and redundant electric charge and velocity measurements. The velocity of singly charged particles is expected to be measured with a precision of 0.1% and charge separation up to iron is attainable. The AMS capability of measuring a large range of electric charges and accurate velocities, will largely contribute to a better understanding of cosmic ray production, acceleration and propagation mechanisms in the galaxy.
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.
The majority of mass in the universe has not been observed optically and is termed dark matter. The supersymmetric neutralino provides an interesting dark matter candidate, which may self-annihilate in our galaxy, producing particles visible in the cosmic ray spectrum. During a ten day space shuttle flight, the AMS-01 detector recorded over 100 million cosmic ray events. This analysis searches for the products of neutralino annihilation in the AMS-01 Z=-1 spectrum, and uses the results to place limits on which supersymmetric and dark matter halo distribution models are compatible.
A measurement of the cosmic ray positron fraction e+/(e+ + e-) in the energy range of 1-30 GeV is presented. The measurement is based on data taken by the AMS-01 experiment during its 10 day Space Shuttle flight in June 1998. A proton background suppression on the order of 10^6 is reached by identifying converted bremsstrahlung photons emitted from positrons.
Preliminary results on the flux of non strongly-interacting, fractionally charged particles in primary cosmic rays at 400 Km above sea level are given. Cosmic ray data collected by AMS-01 in June 1998 have been analysed on the hypotheses of 2/3 charged leptons. The search is carried on by looking at the energy deposition measurements by the time of flight system scintillator counters. A preliminary flux limit is given.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a cosmic ray (CR) experiment that will operate on the International Space Station for three years, measuring the particle spectra in the rigidity range from 0.2 GV to 2 TV. The AMS-02 detector will provide measurements with unprecedented statistics of the hadronic and leptonic cosmic rays, allowing for a better study of the Earth magnetosphere through the secondaries produced by CR interactions in the atmosphere; of the solar system environment through the measurement of the solar modulation over a long period; of the solar system neighborhood through t…
A new measurement of the cosmic ray positron fraction in the energy range of 1-50 GeV is presented. The measurement is based on data taken by the AMS-01 experiment during its 10 day space shuttle flight in June 1998. A proton background suppression in the order of 10^6 is reached by identifying converted bremsstrahlung photons emitted from electrons and positrons.
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. Following the successful flight of the detector prototype (AMS-01) aboard the space shuttle, AMS-02 is expected to provide a significant improvement on the current knowledge of the elemental and isotopic composition of hadr…
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 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 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-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 measure charged cosmic ray spectra of elements up to iron, in the rigidity range from 1 GV to 1 TV, for at least three years. AMS is a large angular spectrometer composed of different subdetectors, including a proximity focusing Ring Imaging CHerenkov (RICH) detector. This will be equipped with a mixed radiator made of aerogel and sodium fluoride (NaF), a lateral conical mirror and a detection plane made of 680 photomultipliers coupled to light guides. The RICH detector allows measurements of pa…
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 rigidit…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS02) experiment will be installed in 2009 on the International Space Station (ISS) for an operational period of at least three years. The purpose of AMS02 experiment is to perform accurate, high statistics, long duration measurements in space of charged cosmic rays in rigidity range from 1 GV to 3 TV and of high energy photons up to few hundred of GeV. In this work we will discuss the experimental details and the physics capabilities of AMS02 on ISS.
New measurements of the cosmic ray fluxes (p, e+, e- and Helium) performed by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) during a ten days flight of space shuttle have revealed the existence of significant fluxes of particles below the geomagnetic cutoff. These fluxes exhibit a number of remarkable properties, such as a He-3/He-4 ratio of order ~10, an e+/e- ratio of order ~4 and production from well defined regions of the Earth that are distinct for positively and negatively charged particles. In this work we show that the natural hypothesis, that these subcutoff particles are generated as seconda…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment is realized in two phases. A precursor flight (STS-91) with a reduced experimental configuration (AMS01) has successfully flown on space shuttle Discovery in June 1998. The final version (AMS02) will be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) as an independent module in early 2006 for an operational period of three years. The main scientific objectives of AMS02 include the searches for the antimatter and dark matter in cosmic rays. In this work we will discuss the experimental details as well as the improved physics capabilities of AMS02 on…
In this note, we report the results of a simulation of the galactic component of high energy gamma rays, as seen by the future AMS-02 experiment on-board the International Space Station. The purpose of AMS is to measure the Cosmic Ray spectra of numerous particles with unprecedented accuracy. This simulation has been performed with the GALPROP code and its output interfaced with the AMS Fast Simulator, to produce a sky-map of yearly counts in the AMS energy range (over 1 GeV).
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 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 (ISS) in 2008, will be equipped with a proximity focusing Ring Imaging CHerenkov detector (RICH). 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 measurements of particle electric charge and velocity. A likelihood method for the Cherenkov angle reconstruction was applied leading to a velocity determination for protons with a resolution around 0.1%. The electric charge reconstruction is…
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 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…
The Time-of-Flight (TOF) system of the AMS detector gives the fast trigger to the read out electronics and measures velocity, direction and charge of the crossing particles. The first version of the detector (called AMS-01) has flown in 1998 aboard of the shuttle Discovery for a 10 days test mission, and collected about $10^8$ events. The new version (called AMS-02) will be installed on the International Space Station and will operate for at least three years, collecting roughly $10^{10}$ Cosmic Ray (CR) particles. The TOF system of AMS-01 successfully operated during the test mission, obtaini…
The Time-of-Flight (TOF) system of the AMS detector gives the fast trigger to the read out electronics and measures velocity, direction and charge of the crossing particles. The first version of the detector (called AMS-01) has flown in 1998 aboard of the shuttle Discovery for a 10 days test mission, and collected about $10^8$ events. The new version (called AMS-02) will be installed on the International Space Station on March 2004 and will operate for at least three years, collecting roughly $10^{10}$ Cosmic Rays (CR) particles. The TOF system of AMS-01 successfully operated during the test m…
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 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…
This thesis discusses the search for supersymmetry at the future Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the ongoing construction of one of the four large LHC experiments, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), and focuses on the detection of signals from the annihilation of supersymmetric dark matter in the spectra of cosmic rays. Measurements of cosmic ray antiparticles, such as positrons, can impose strong constraints on the nature of new physics beyond the Standard Model. However, cosmic ray positron measurements are experimentally very challenging due to the vast proton background. A novel approach of …
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) 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…
A study prototype of Proximity Focussing Ring Imaging Cherenkov counter has been built and tested with several radiators using separately cosmic-ray particles and 12C beam fragmentation products at several energies. Counter prototype and experimental setup are described, and the results of measurements reported and compared with simulation results.The performances are discussed in the perspective of the final counter design.
