Studies of Cosmic-Ray Proton Flux with the DAMPE Experiment

Abstract

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space-based mission designed as a high energy particle detector for measuring cosmic-rays and gamma-rays in space. It was successfully launched on December 17, 2015, and since then it has been in stable data taking for more than one year. The large geometric factor and thick calorimeter enables DAMPE to have very good potential to measure cosmic-rays from 20 GeV up to 100 TeV. Here we analyze the proton component using the DAMPE flight data. Comprehensive Monte-Carlo simulations have been employed to validate the event selections and estimate the efficiency as well as the geometry factor. The analysis progress is reported and discussed.

Anisotropy Searches with DAMPE

“…Although DAMPE is able to identify types of the incoming particles, such identification requires quite stringent selection cuts. For example, for the submitted paper on the proton flux [2] the number of selected events is about 2 × 10 6 for a 30 month period. With the all-particle sample one can have approximately 6-7 times more data.…”

“…The all-particle sample, according to the flux studies [1,2], consists of protons on ∼ 90%. The BGO energy of 100 GeV for a proton roughly corresponds to the true particle energy of 200 GeV.…”