Speaker
Description
The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) is a high-energy cosmic-ray detector that has been in continuous operation on the International Space Station (ISS) since October 2015. Developed by JAXA in collaboration with ASI and NASA to study the origin of cosmic rays (CR), their acceleration and propagation mechanisms in the Galaxy, and to search for dark matter and the presence of potential nearby astrophysical sources of high-energy electrons, CALET has so far detected more than 2 billion events with an energy >10 GeV. The analysis of these data allowed to measure the energy spectra of electron+positron and individual CR nuclear species up to the multi-TeV region, revealing spectral features such as a sharp break in the electron flux around 1 TeV, the hardening of the proton, He, C, O fluxes at a few hundred GeV/n and the softening of the proton and He spectra around 10 TeV/n.
In addition, the measurement of the B/C and B/O flux ratios up to a few TeV/n indicates the possible presence of a residual propagation length compatible with the hypothesis that a fraction of secondary B nuclei can be produced in the vicinity of the cosmic ray source.
I will summarise these results obtained with CALET, highlight similarities and discrepancies with measurements from other recent experiments, and discuss the main sources of systematic uncertainties affecting the spectra.
