Calibration and performance of the neutron detector onboard of the DAMPE mission

Abstract

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), one of the four space-based scientific missions within the framework of the Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was successfully launched on 2015 Dec. 17 from Jiuquan launch center. One of the most important scientific goals of DAMPE is to search for evidence of dark matter indirectly by measuring the spectrum of high energy cosmic-ray electrons. The neutron detector, one of the four sub-payloads of DAMPE, is designed to distinguish high energy electrons from hadron background by measuring the secondary neutrons produced in the shower. In this paper, a comprehensive introduction of the neutron detector is presented, including the design, calibration and performance. The analysis with simulated data and flight data indicates a powerful proton rejection capability of the neutron detector, which plays an essential role for TeV electron identification of DAMPE.

Advantages and Requirements in Time Resolving Tracking for Astroparticle Experiments in Space

“…An electron/proton separation (e/p) of at least ∼ 10 5 is required to achieve a precise measurement of the e ± component in CRs. At high energies, e/p separation is provided by 3D shower topology imaging in calorimeters, by the yield of X-ray transition radiation in gaseous detectors and by the presence of slow neutrons in the shower components downstream of the calorimeter [63,64]. The investigation of the hit timing footprint from back-scattered secondaries in the tracker could provide additional, independent information to further improve the e/p separation abilities of the whole detector.…”

Cosmic Ray Helium spectrum measured by the DAMPE experiment

“…The energy deposited by the incoming particle is then measured by the core of the DAMPE experiment, a deep BGO calorimeter [11] composed of 14 layers of Bi 3 Ge 4 O 12 crystal bars. The last sub-detector is the NeUtron Detector (NUD) [12] made of boron-doped plastic scintillator tiles improving the discrimination power for hadronic and electromagnetic showers.…”

Measurement of the Boron to Carbon Flux Ratio in Cosmic Rays with the DAMPE Experiment

“…The DAMPE detector consists of 4 sub-detectors, which are a Plastic Scintillator strip Detector (PSD)[? ], a Silicon-Tungsten tracKer-converter(STK) [16], a BGO imaging calorimeter [17] and a NeUtron Detector (NUD) [18] from top to bottom. The PSD measures the charge of an incident particle It can also be used as an anti-coincidence detector for γ-rays.…”